


History

by copperleaves



Series: Learning to See [3]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Spencer Reid, Case Fic, Coming Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Unsub | Unknown Subject
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26109658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperleaves/pseuds/copperleaves
Summary: The early-morning murder of a Metro PD detective has his partner, Emily Prentiss, joining the team on their latest case. As they investigate, there seem to be more questions than answers. Gideon's old suspicions about Jackson come to the fore, and she learns things about her past with the CIA that she would rather have left buried.Third in the series, after "Endgame" and "Reckoning."
Relationships: Spencer Reid & Original Female Character(s), The BAU Team & Original Character(s)
Series: Learning to See [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885702
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends! Back again with another installment of my au with my OC, Elliot Jackson. This is the third in the trilogy that started with Endgame and continued with Reckoning, so if you haven't read them, but you might hop on over to give 'em a look-see.
> 
> This takes place immediately following the events in Reckoning-as in, the very next morning. That means it's late s2, following 2x18 "Jones."
> 
> I started this fic a long time ago and never finished it. Now, as I'm rewriting these old fics, this one not only got rewritten, but also it is FINISHED! Yaaayy! And it includes one of my favorite things I've ever written for Criminal Minds, but that's not until the last chapter so hang in there.
> 
> Enjoy! And maybe hmu w a review or something idk whatever that's fine.

**Betrayal is the willful slaughter of hope.**  
Steven Deitz

 **Arlington, VA**  
**Elliot Jackson's Apartment**  
It was still early; not quite seven, she gauged by the quality of light; but the birds were up and about in happy little choirs. It was spring in northern Virginia, good and proper, and that meant chirping birds, blooming flowers, and itchy noses. The good far outweighed the bad, and it was a wonderful time to be alive.

Elliot Jackson had more reason to be thankful than most: the recent ordeal she and her partner, Spencer Reid, had been through in Florida was still very fresh in her mind.

And on her body, as her many cuts, scrapes, and bruises could attest.

But for now Jackson rolled over in bed with a long, contented sigh. Even though she was still bruised, still hurting, she felt like she might actually recover. Last night had been a step in the right direction for sure. Smiling, she slid her hand across the bed to find…empty space. Her smile melted into a frown as she sat up; brushed short brown hair out of her face. He was gone. What…?

Anger was tickling the back of her mind when she saw the note. Of course. He wouldn't just disappear; that wasn't his way.

_Els Bells –_  
_Went to get pancakes. You looked like you could use the sleep. See you soon._  
_Yours,_  
_Taj_  
_PS: don't you dare put any clothes on before I get back!_

The postscript made her laugh aloud. Typical Taj. She glanced at the clock: seven AM, just as she'd predicted. She yawned. Snuggled back under the covers, and it was hardly any time at all before she was asleep again.

Her dreams were dark and haunted. A small, bare cell. A mad man with a gun. Spencer with a needle. Spencer, again, this time shooting her instead of their kidnapper. She tossed restlessly; swore she could hear the gunshot; but after a time the nightmares faded and she slipped more deeply into sleep.

Hours later some annoying, insistent noise tugged her toward consciousness. She tried to ignore it, but it wouldn't go away, and as awareness gradually returned, she realized it was her BlackBerry. With a grunt of irritation she began blindly groping for it. Her hand brushed across the nightstand's surface, and she heard the decisive thud of small electronic equipment hitting rug-shrouded wooden floor.

Sighing melodramatically, she hopped from the bed (winced as her sore ribs protested such sudden movement) and retrieved the histrionic phone. A glance at the caller ID told her the early caller was Aaron Hotchner, her boss at the BAU, and that it wasn't nearly as early as she'd expected—nearly ten o'clock. She spared a brief moment to wonder how the hell long it took to get pancakes before answering the call.

"Jackson," she gasped.

"EJ, you sound out of breath. Everything okay?"

"Yes, sorry, I just dropped my phone and had to chase it. Early morning aerobics are hard on the ribs. What's up?"

There was a heartbeat of silence. "EJ, listen. I know it's Saturday and you've had a rough week—to say the least—but I need you on a case."

She blinked. Why did he sound so strange? "I, um…I've been cleared for light duty, Hotch, you know that."

"Right," he said a bit too quickly, "of course. We're just around the corner from you, at the Fig Tree Café. How soon can you be here?"

She tried to shake the instant, all-encompassing feeling of dread that descended over her and her formerly perfect Saturday morning. "Give me twenty minutes," she said.

"Good. I'll see you soon."

She hung up without replying, and her eyes landed on Taj's note. He'd been gone nearly three hours. It didn't take three hours to grab breakfast, especially not in this part of Arlington; there were little cafes and restaurants all over the place ( _like the Fig Tree_ , that annoying voice in the back of her mind taunted). It should've taken thirty minutes, max. Maybe he got called in to work? Just like she was being called in…

She glanced down at the phone she gripped much too tightly and realized that all of this anxiety could be quelled with one phone call. She could hear his voice, tell him she'd been called in, hear his excuse for taking so long…but she didn't make that call. Instead her small, trembling hand gently replaced the phone on the nightstand, and she turned toward her bathroom. The shower, and her day, beckoned, however unwelcome the latter might be.

* * *

**Arlington, VA  
****The Fig Tree Café  
**Hotch snapped his phone closed with a short, bleak sigh. He looked up and into Jason Gideon's deep eyes. "You didn't tell her," the older man said softly.

"No," Hotch said. "How could I? Besides, we don't even know the relationship. She might barely know him. Better to let her get here; we can explain everything to her in person." He frowned, watching as the ME removed the bagged bodies. "Have you gotten in touch with the partner?"

"The Metro police are on their way. They said these are the fifth and sixth murders matching this MO in the last three months. They had been thinking of calling us in anyway; now that it's one of their guys in the bag, they're glad to have us."

"Agent Hotchner?" a slightly husky female voice said from behind them. The two men turned to take in the tall, elegant brunette with dark, somber eyes and porcelain skin. She held out a hand. "Detective Emily Prentiss. Taj was my partner."

Hotch shook the offered hand. "Taj?" he said, even as some signal went off in his brain. He knew this woman from somewhere, he was sure of it. But where?

"Peter McCall, your…victim." Her voice caught on this last word. "We all called him Taj," she continued after a moment. "It's a nickname he brought over with him from the Agency."

"The Agency," Gideon said. "Detective McCall was a Company man before he became a cop?"

"Yes," Prentiss said, "briefly. He joined the Metro PD two years ago. We've been partners the last year."

"Emily Prentiss," Hotch suddenly said. "Your mother is the ambassador, Elizabeth Prentiss."

Prentiss' dark eyes glanced toward the agent, her brows rising briefly. "Of course," she said. Her voice warmed slightly as recognition clicked. "Aaron Hotchner. You were assigned to my mother's security detail, weren't you?"

He nodded, a smile momentarily brightening his pensive features. "My first assignment. It seems like a very long time ago." His brows drew together in consideration. "You were on your way to…Yale, was it? How does one go from Yale to being a cop?"

A brilliant grin illuminated her face before it faded. It was dazzling, like a camera flash in a dark room. "I went to Yale. I graduated. I was bored. I thought about the Bureau, but I decided being a cop would piss my mother off that much more. So here I am." Her face clouded as she took in the pool of blood staining the floor. "And there's Taj," she said softly. "What happened here?"

"What do you mean _there's Taj_?" a new voice demanded.

Hotch closed his eyes a moment. Shit, that wasn't at all according to plan. Sighing, he turned toward his newest agent, a very-distressed looking Elliot Jackson; she still had bruises on her face, for God's sake. "EJ," he said, "maybe we should go sit down."

"I don't want to sit down. I want to know what's happening here. Where's Taj?"

"Who are you?" Prentiss said, though not unkindly.

"I could ask you the same thing," Jackson said. She was being rude, she knew, but she hadn't cared for the woman's tone when she had said Taj's name. It had sounded…proprietary.

Hotch and Gideon exchanged wary looks. "Elliot, this is Detective Emily Prentiss of the Metro PD. Detective Prentiss, Dr. Elliot Jackson, a member of my team."

The blood seemed to drain from Jackson's face in an instant, and Hotch reached out a hand toward her, afraid she might keel over. "You're his partner," she managed in a thick, strangled voice. "Why are you here? Where the hell is Taj?"

"Jack, did you and Detective McCall work together at the Agency? Is that how you know him?" Gideon said.

Her normally clear glass-green eyes looked fuzzy and dazed as they drifted from Hotch to Gideon. "Yes," she said. "You never profiled him?"

Gideon shrugged. "I didn't profile everyone," he said. "You, for instance."

"What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were off to your cabin last night."

"I was delayed."

Hotch glanced between Gideon and Jackson. There was something going on here, some undercurrent in their conversation that he didn't understand. He definitely didn't like it. "EJ, I called you because when the Arlington PD examined Detective McCall's phone, your number was the last one he dialed. Why is that?"

She swallowed; tried to collect herself. Her gaze lingered on the pool of blood. Hotch had been trying to block her view of it with his body, but a slight shift of his weight had brought the too-vivid puddle to her attention. "We went out last night," she told him in a soft, dull voice. "He left this morning to get pancakes before I woke up. That's why he was here."

"Was the safe opened?" Prentiss said to Hotch; her voice was hushed, as though she didn't want to intrude on Jackson's grief.

"Yes, but we don't think anything is missing."

She nodded. "Sounds like the same guy. I've got four murders on my desk with this MO. The first two were in the District, then a double at a convenience store in Arlington."

"Tell me what happened," Jackson said. "Please, Hotch."

"Detective McCall was here getting breakfast," he began, his tone gentle. "The UNSUB came in, forced the owner to open the safe, and then he shot your friend and the café owner. We didn't find Detective McCall's weapon."

"No," she said, "he left it on my hall table. Breakfast isn't usually so violent."

"Our guy never takes anything," Prentiss said in a grim voice. "He hits places when they're as empty as possible, one or two employees only. He wants to make sure he can control the situation."

"This is about power, the thrill of the kill," Gideon said as he rubbed his hands together. "Hotch, call the rest of the team. We need to start working on a profile. This guy isn't going to stop anytime soon, especially once he learns he killed a cop."

"EJ, go home," Hotch said. "We'll call you once we know anything."

She looked up at him with a wounded, helpless expression. "You can't make me stay out of this, Hotch. You need me for victimology. Let me read the scene."

"No," Gideon said. "No, Jack, this scene is one you don't need to read. Do you really want to know what happened in that much detail?"

She shuddered at the thought. "Good point. But I'm not going home. Detective Prentiss is his partner; you're not cutting her out."

"That's different," she said.

Hotch eyed her. "Not terribly." He sighed. The last thing he felt like doing was arguing with her when she got that stubborn glint in her eye. "Fine, but only because Reid's out sick. I can't be down two agents. But, EJ, I'm going to trust you to pull out if it becomes too personal, understand?"

"Thank you, sir. You won't regret it."

He followed her out onto the street to begin questioning witnesses. "I better not," he muttered.

* * *

**Quantico, VA  
**"Hey, baby girl, happy Saturday," Derek Morgan called out to Penelope Garcia as he spotted her across the bullpen. Her blond hair was braided in pigtails, and she had a huge magenta silk gerbera daisy tucked behind one ear. Her skirt was covered in red, fuchsia and purple daisies, and she had a cardigan the same shade of purple thrown over her shoulders. In other words, she looked exactly like Garcia. It warmed his heart.

She glowered. "It was a happy Saturday, until my phone rang and woke me from the greatest dream.…" Her eyes went hazy before her attention snapped back to Morgan. Cheeks suddenly flamed bright pink, and she ducked her head with a little squeak. "That's not important. Do you know anything about the case?"

He raised his brows at her, but decided not to ask. "Hotch didn't tell me much on the phone. Apparently the latest vic is Metro PD, though. That's part of why it's become so high priority."

Crimson lips parted in distress. "We've got a dead cop? Very bad."

"You're tellin' me, mama. Why don't you go do that voodoo you do so well and find out if any of our vics link up? It'd be nice to have something to give Hotch and Gideon when they get back here."

She grinned. "I'm already on it, sugar. Hotch gave me the list of names, and they're running through all my checks as we speak. Tell me something: who is the Queen of the Information Superhighway?"

"You are, baby girl. It's all you."

She patted his cheek. "Don't you forget it, tall, dark, and handsome. Now I must return to work. You know where to find me if you need all your dreams to come true!"

He watched her sashay away with a smile. "I surely do, Ms. Garcia," he murmured. Shaking his head, he turned his attention back to work. He was on his way to the conference room when the elevator dinged and the rest of the team—minus Reid, who was "out sick"—filed into the bullpen. His dark brows came together when he caught sight of Jack. She looked…shell-shocked, he decided. There were the bruises and the split lip, the bandaged hands, but it was more than that.

"Morgan," Hotch said, "this is Detective Emily Prentiss of the Metro PD. Peter McCall was her partner; she's going to be joining us on the investigation since the first three cases are hers."

Morgan shook the woman's hand. "Derek Morgan," he said. "I'm sorry about your partner."

She nodded. "Thank you, Agent Morgan." She indicated the briefcase she carried. "I brought the files I have with me. Where can I set up?"

JJ smiled at her. "Follow me; I'll take you to the conference room. I'm Jennifer Jareau, the team's media liaison. JJ. Would you like some coffee?"

"Coffee would be great," she said, the corners of her mouth lifting at the thought.

"This way, then; hopefully someone remembered to start a pot," JJ said with a meaningful glance in Morgan's direction.

He tried to look innocent, but JJ just shook her head and led Prentiss to the coffee bar. "Garcia's running checks on the vics now," Morgan told Hotch. "Soon we'll know if they share any connection."

Gideon shook his head slowly, contemplatively. "Not necessarily. If any of them were Agency, it might not show up on Garcia's standard checks."

Morgan looked blank a moment. "McCall was CIA?"

"Former," Jackson said, so quietly he almost didn't hear her.

His concerned dark eyes homed in on her. That was why she looked like a train wreck; she'd known the latest vic. "Friend of yours?" he said.

Her mouth twisted. "You could say that."

Hotch cleared his throat and shot Morgan a glare over Jackson's head. He took the hint and let it go.

"EJ, let's go to my office," Hotch said. "We need to talk about Detective McCall."

Gideon elected to follow them, and Morgan was left standing alone in the bullpen, feeling as though he were missing a huge piece of this particular puzzle.

* * *

The three agents filed into Hotch's office and sat. Hotch took a chair on the same side of the desk as Gideon and Jackson; he felt that now wasn't the time to barricade himself behind the expanse of mahogany. Silence filled the room, and after a moment he leaned toward his newest agent. "Tell us about Detective McCall, EJ," he said. "Why do you call him _Taj_?"

She smiled, briefly. "He's Indian; adopted, obviously; and his last name is McCall. Taj was a pretty natural nickname, don't you think? We were big on nicknames at the Agency."

"In a world of secrets and lies, the nicknames provided a sense of honesty," Gideon said.

"Yes," she agreed. "I'd known him my entire career. He was a good agent."

"Detective Prentiss got us a victim list," Hotch said. He fanned several photos out in front of her. "Do you know any of these people?"

She stared down at the photographs, green eyes going wide. She pointed. "Alyssa Horton. She went to my high school, but after I graduated."

Graying brows drew together over dark eyes as Gideon pondered. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You've read my file, Gideon; think about it."

His face clouded; cleared; creased in a deep, hard frown. "Silar Creek Academy. It's not a regular school, is it?"

"No. The Agency recruits _young people of interest_ and sends them to Silar to _further foster developing talen_ t. It says that last bit in the brochures, even; it sounds good on every level."

Hotch absorbed this in silence; Gideon just watched, as none of it was news to him. "Psychics," Hotch said after a moment.

"Psychics, yes. And others. Geniuses like Reid; anyone who might be of special aid to the country. I can't go into too much detail, but let me say there are plenty of people there who are far better at what I do than I am."

"What do you mean?" Hotch said with narrowed eyes.

She fidgeted a moment. "I've seen a man walk into a room full of people, and within thirty seconds he knew every dirty little secret, every nasty little thought, every hidden, shameful desire each person had ever had. He didn't touch any of them. They never knew he was reading them. It was…horrifying."

"You can't do that," Gideon said in an almost-question.

She shook her head violently. "I wouldn't want to." She hesitated; bit her lower lip even though it was still sore from Burns' punch. "They trained us to use our abilities; some of us were trained to be more passive, a bit more benign; others were trained to be more aggressive."

"And Detective McCall was one of these?"

"Taj? Oh, no. He was blinkered. I didn't meet Taj until after I graduated and joined the Agency proper."

"Blinkered?" Hotch said, frowning.

"It's school slang. You know, like those things they put on carriage horses—the blinders. It just means he was normal."

"And Alyssa Horton?" Gideon said.

Jackson swallowed. "She was—I—"

"It's okay, EJ," Hotch said quietly. "You know we need to know."

She looked away; her face scrunched. "She was very powerful. I didn't know her well; she scared me. She loved her ability, loved using it to scare the straights. She'd pull some insanely obscure bit of knowledge or some deep, dark secret from your mind and throw it out at you at the worst possible moment. She laughed at the hurt and fear she caused."

"Sounds charming," Gideon said. "So was she involved with what happened at Silar Creek?"

"What happened at Silar Creek?" Hotch said as his dark brows drew together.

"She was a student there; why wasn't she one of the victims? Or maybe she was the UNSUB?" Gideon persisted while ignoring Hotch.

"You didn't profile a woman," Jackson said.

"No, that's true, but at the time I didn't know I was profiling psychics and mind readers. I want to know what you know about the case, Jack."

She crossed her arms over her chest; drummed the fingers of one hand against the opposite elbow. "How much do you know about the murders at Silar Creek?".

He frowned. "Little. I tried to aid the investigation, but I was shut down. I offered to draw up a profile, to interview witnesses, to view the crime scenes; I was cordially rejected every time."

She sighed and lifted her hands in a tired, defeated gesture. "The first victim was my partner's wife," she said. "Andrea Talbot. That's how I got involved in it all; Dan asked me to do what I could since he was naturally excluded. I partnered up with Taj, since he was already on it."

"Is that why the Agency took over a serial case that rightly should have belonged to local authorities and the BAU?" he said. "The CIA has no jurisdiction on American soil, but they didn't seem to care about such minor details."

"Yes," she said, choosing to ignore the last bit. "That, and…the other three victims were students at Silar Creek Academy." Jackson looked away, her pretty face set in somber lines. "The three young women killed were very promising. One had an ability similar to mine; the other two had IQs on par with Spencer's."

"Who would have that kind of information?"

"Hardly anyone. It had to be someone on the inside. That's why the Agency took over the case. They didn't want anyone else digging into all their secrets, dirty and otherwise."

"And would anyone outside the Agency know McCall was one of the agents who worked that case?"

"No, no one."

"What are the odds two agents have gone rogue?"

"Low. But, Jason…" She hesitated, leaned closer. "I'm not convinced anyone went rogue at all. With the exception of Andrea—a red herring if there ever was one—I think, maybe, the Slayer was just following orders And I think he still is."

"Enough," Hotch interrupted in that steely voice that stopped everyone cold. He had no clue what they were talking about, but he felt it was too early to be jumping to any conclusions. And he needed to know more. "EJ, talk to Detective Prentiss. I want the two of you to go re-interview anyone related to the Alyssa Horton murder. Also, talk to her about the other victims; if this case you're talking about is truly a connection, we need to know about it."

"Hotch, I—"

"You're not being punished, EJ. I need you working victimology on this one; you know two of the victims, and you might know more."

After a moment she nodded and left to do as he ordered. The two men sat facing each other in silence; Hotch crossed his arms over his chest and fixed his former mentor with a penetrating glare. "Tell me about Silar Creek," he ordered shortly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun! this is a complex case that delves into a lot of Jackson's hidden background stuff. like I said at the top, if you haven't read the previous 2 stories, you might wanna start there. oh, also, I know Hotch wasn't actually ON Elizabeth Prentiss' security detail, but uhhhh this is an au soooo yeah he was. from now on if you see small things like that that vary from canon, just assume it's an au and things are different here!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The CIA is, as ever, reluctant to part with its secrets. Reid's called back from "sick leave" to help with the case. Jackson shares some of what she knows, but it only makes Gideon doubt her more.

**she'd stand on tiptoes for you in a grey and tattered tutu**  
**she stays where she is because of voyeurs like these**  
**with an accusative look that says my dark life**  
Elvis Costello, "My Dark Life"

"Jack," JJ said as Jackson emerged from Hotch's office. "We're set up in the conference room." She paused to study Jackson's face with a deep, concerned frown. "Are you okay? I heard Detective McCall was a friend."

Jackson didn't bother trying to dredge up a smile for JJ's benefit; she knew her friend would understand, and she wouldn't be fooled by any attempt at bluffing.

"I'm not sure it's really hit me yet," she admitted. "I just want to focus on the case; the sooner we find this UNSUB, the sooner I can…" She hesitated; shrugged. "Mourn, I guess," she finally decided.

JJ gave her shoulder a quick, gentle squeeze. "If you need anything, case-related or otherwise, you know where I am. I mean it, Jack."

"Thank you, JJ. I appreciate it."

Her lovely face lit with a warm smile. "Anytime. Now I'm off to call Spence; Hotch wants him kept up-to-date so we don't have to waste time filling him in when he gets back."

"Go on, mother hen; I'll see you later." The two exchanged parting smiles before Jackson smoothed her face and entered the conference room. Crime scene photos glared at her from every angle, and she let her eyes drift over them without focusing. Her gaze came to rest on Morgan and Detective Prentiss where they sat together at the round table. Files were strewn everywhere, and the two had obviously been in deep discussion about the details of the case.

"Hey, pint size," Morgan said as he looked up from an autopsy report.

Her mouth curved, and she was grateful that Morgan, at least, wasn't treating her like she was about to lose her shit. "Morgan, Detective Prentiss," she said with nods to each of them.

"Please," Prentiss said, "if we all keep _Agent_ -ing and _Detective_ -ing each other, we'll be here all day. Just plain _Prentiss_ is fine."

"Prentiss," Jackson said, "everyone around here calls me Jack. I'd like to apologize for my earlier behavior; I wasn't exactly myself."

She gave a quick, rueful smile. "Neither was I. No apology needed. Taj always spoke very well of you."

Jackson's brows quirked in surprise. "Taj talked about me?"

"You're Els, right? Yeah, he was constantly talking about how perceptive you are. He said…" She suddenly frowned as an old memory resurfaced. "He told me once that if anything ever happened to him, you were the person I should call. He said you would figure it out. I laughed at him when he said it. I'd almost forgotten that."

"Detective McCall was in fear for his life?" Morgan said.

Prentiss shrugged. "Not exactly. It was something he said sort of off-handedly. It's been a while ago, and he hadn't mentioned it since."

Jackson's face had gone tight; her mouth was a grim line. "Taj never did or said anything without a reason. He knew someone would come for him sooner or later."

The detective drummed the end of her pen against the table. "She's right," she told Morgan with a slow, thoughtful nod. "Taj was always very precise. He wouldn't have said something so paranoid-sounding unless he had a reason to be paranoid."

Jackson's legs suddenly felt weak, and her face was pale as she collapsed into one of the nearby chairs. "I think we need to go over the victim list very carefully, Prentiss. Taj was a spy; Alyssa Horton was CIA-trained. There are other connections; Taj wasn't the only one who had reason to be paranoid."

His brows drew together over wide brown eyes. "You think the victims might be specific targets because of their involvement with the Agency?"

She shook her head. "It's too early to tell. Two doesn't make a pattern, just a funny coincidence."

"Or the other victims could be camouflage," Prentiss said.

"Like in the Beltway Killer case," Morgan said.

"There have only been two double murders, right?" Jackson said.

Prentiss nodded, pointing out the crime scene photos on the board. "Alyssa Horton and John Dempsey, and now today, Taj and Alexander Nelson."

"Dempsey was an employee at the convenience store and Nelson owned the café. It's possible that the first two murders were simply to establish an MO that the UNSUB could then use to cover up the killings of his actual targets—Horton and Detective McCall," Morgan said.

"We should get the team together," Jackson said. "Gideon and I need to explain a few things, I think, and we all need to be briefed on the case thus far."

"Aren't you down a man?" Prentiss said. "Agent Reid?"

Morgan and Jackson exchanged a silent glance. "He's…been ill," Jackson said. "He might be able to join us tomorrow. Hopefully."

"It'd be nice," Morgan said. "I think this case is gonna require everything we've got…and then some."

Jackson let out a soft breath as her clear green gaze drifted over the photos once again. "I think you're right, Morgan. And it scares the hell out of me."

* * *

"The Silar Creek Slayer," Gideon stated into the conference room's expectant silence.

"Never heard of him," Morgan said.

"No," Jackson agreed, "you wouldn't have. The whole thing was kept very quiet." She shifted in her chair; took a sip of bitter coffee. "The Slayer killed four women over six months in 2002. He stopped abruptly after the fourth victim, and he hasn't been heard from since."

"Do you have files for these cases?" JJ said.

Gideon shook his head. "Doubtful. Maybe buried somewhere at Langley. Who knows."

"This was never a BAU case," Hotch said.

"I was consulting with the CIA at the time," Gideon said. "I knew about the Slayer, but when I offered my expertise—"

"The Agency preferred to keep things in-house," Jackson interrupted. She told them everything she'd told Hotch and Gideon earlier, except the more esoteric parts of her high school's curriculum. "I can get us files. It won't be easy, but I can get them," she said.

"What does any of this have to do with our case?" Prentiss said.

"Taj was a lead investigator on the Silar Creek case," Jackson said. "Just before we were shut down, we theorized that the Slayer stopped killing because he was finished, simple as that."

"Finished?" Hotch echoed. "EJ, you don't really believe—?"

"I don't know what to believe, Hotch. All I know is I got into the investigation near the beginning; we never got anywhere through three other deaths; and then shortly after the fourth murder we were unceremoniously shut down."

There was another silence as the group mulled this over. Finally, Morgan said, "What was the Slayer's MO? Gun?"

"No," Gideon said. "He garroted his victims from behind."

"That's totally different," Morgan said. "Why would someone go from garroting to shooting? It doesn't make sense."

"I'm not saying our UNSUB is the Slayer," Jackson told him. "All I'm saying is Taj was involved in that case, and Alyssa was a student at Silar the same time as the Slayer's victims.

"You were a student at Silar, too," Hotch said.

"Ye-es," she agreed reluctantly, "but I graduated in '96. That's several years before the Slayer got started."

"Wait, you're only a year older than Reid," Gideon said. "How did you graduate high school in 1996?"

"I was fifteen," she said. "I did one of those college and high school classes at the same time programs. College courses counted double, so I finished high school in two years, and graduated with a year of college credit."

"I thought the Agency recruited you directly out of high school," Hotch said. "You were only sixteen?"

"Well…" She hesitated. Then, "They paid for me to go to college, on the promise that I'd come work for them as soon as I graduated. Which I did. But one could argue they recruited me directly out of _middle_ school, since I went to Silar Creek."

"Wow," Prentiss said with a delicate snort. "You really must've been CIA material."

"I guess so," Jackson said, mildly.

"If our current UNSUB is going after people involved in that case, or is finishing what the Slayer originally started, then it's possible you could be a target," Morgan said. "Your connection to both the school and the case can't be ignored."

"That's a secondary concern right now," she said.

"Is it?" Prentiss said. "Taj was apparently worried that someone might be after him; he said you would know why. What other cases did the two of you work together besides this one?"

"Taj wasn't my partner. We were involved in some of the same cases, sure, but the only one we worked closely was Silar Creek."

Hotch rubbed his face in resignation. What a day. One agent out with hydromorphone withdrawal; another the possible target of an UNSUB. Again. The inevitable jurisdictional battles with the CIA. The strange tension between EJ and Gideon. "All right, here's what's going to happen. EJ, get us the Slayer files. I can make some calls, too, if I have to, and if all else fails, we'll get Garcia on it. JJ, call Reid again. I want to know when he might be able to come in; we need him here. Gideon, work with Morgan and Detective Prentiss to start drawing up a preliminary profile on the shooter."

He paused. Then, "I'm going to talk to Garcia; we need whatever she has on the victims, and I want her to start looking into the Silar Creek victims, too."

"So you think the two cases are connected?" Gideon said.

"I don't know," he admitted, "but we need to find out. EJ, I know you consider your own safety secondary to this case, but you are not to leave this office without an armed escort, do you understand me?"

She nodded with uncharacteristic meekness. "Yes, sir."

He cast a grim glance around the room. "All right, people; let's get to work."

They scattered.

* * *

Spencer Reid was sprawled on his living room couch staring at the ceiling. He was currently taking careful stock of his physical condition. He still felt a bit sick and shaky, a bit weak, but overall he was much improved. It had been several days since he last used, all the way back to the cell with Jack, and he felt…good.

Exhausted. Smelly. But good.

He was contemplating solid food (worth the risk or not?) when his phone rang. Again. He checked the Caller ID and saw that it was JJ. Again. He sighed. He was supposed to be out until Wednesday, but he knew two calls in a few hours meant that the case was high priority. Hotch would want him back as soon as possible.

"JJ, what's up?" he said into the phone.

"Spence, hi, I'm sorry to bother you again. It's about the case."

"Of course it is. What's going on?"

"We've got some information about an old case Jack worked at the CIA. It might be connected to these shootings, and Hotch really wants you on this. If you're up to it, of course."

He sighed again. Ran a hand through his short, tangled curls. "Yeah, okay. Give me an hour."

"Are you sure, Spence? We've got a detective from the Metro PD assisting us, so—"

"It's fine, JJ. Just—just make sure there's fresh coffee."

"Will do. See you soon."

He said his goodbyes and ended the call. He had gathered from his last conversation with JJ that the most recent victim was the man Jack had been on her way to see after leaving him last night. She'd said they'd worked together at the Agency; had been involved before. Reid imagined she was taking the man's death hard, but she wasn't showing it. She'd be concentrating on the case—since apparently Hotch hadn't summarily sent her home—and keeping the emotions it dredged up buried.

Sometimes they were too much alike for Reid's comfort.

He had reached the bathroom by this time, and he stared at his own reflection for several long heartbeats. His face was drawn and pale, and his hazel eyes seemed sunken into the sockets. His hair looked like he'd stuck his hand in a wall socket. With a resigned frown, he reached behind him and turned the shower on as hot as it would go; stripped off his dirty sweats; deposited them in the hamper for the first time in weeks. In a tiny effort to straighten up, he shoved some of the clothes lying around his bedroom and bathroom in after his recently discarded ones. It was a good thing he got his work clothes dry-cleaned, or he'd have nothing to wear.

He stepped under the scorching, stinging spray and gave a little sigh of relief. The water felt amazing sloughing over his skin, and for the first time in months he felt…glad to be alive. Glad Hankel hadn't killed him. Free. He shampooed his hair twice; scoured his entire body with the loofa Garcia had given him for Christmas. (That had been an interesting surprise – "What, um…what is it?" "A loofa, silly, to use in the shower." "Why would I use something like this in the shower? It's rough." She'd just blinked at him.)

He chuckled at the memory as he stepped out of the shower and dried his thin frame. Now, clean in more ways than one, he set about preparing for his fresh start.

* * *

Less than an hour after receiving Hotch's marching orders, Jackson stuck her head into the conference room. "The files are on their way. They won't risk faxing them, so they're sending them by courier. Hotch has to sign for them. Probably has to give a DNA sample and promise them his second born, too."

Her irony was lost on the small group gathered around the table. Gideon stared at her over his reading glasses with intense eyes. "That was fast," he said.

A dark brow rose. "I called a friend," she said.

"Must've been a good one," Morgan said. "You made it sound like it would be practically impossible to get those files."

She hesitated; stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. "I called my former partner. I was a bit surprised by how easily he was able to get his hands on them, but, like I told you before, his wife was the first victim. I guess that gives him a bit more pull."

"And they know where the files are going?" Prentiss said.

"Yes. Hence the signing and the DNA." She waved a hand. "It seems like we got a break this time, guys; let's not question it."

"Good point," Prentiss said.

Gideon was still frowning. "Jack, can I see you in my office?" Though his inflection made it a question, his tone turned it into an order.

"Um. Of course," she said, stepping aside to let him go past her out the door. She and Morgan exchanged a worried glance before she hurried to follow the older agent.

Prentiss watched them go with a frown. "What's up there?"

Morgan shrugged; shook his head. "I don't know. They have some past CIA connection, and Gideon's the one who got her on this team. I don't know why he's acting so weird now."

"I hope he's not going to let whatever personal issues he has interfere with the investigation."

Morgan frowned. The team (namely, Hotch) knew his reservations about Gideon, but he wasn't sure he should share them with an outsider. He'd encouraged Jack to talk to Gideon about Reid; she'd been reluctant, she'd said, due to their history. He knew few details, just what she'd mentioned to him in passing over the past few months, but he was gradually realizing that whatever problems Gideon had with their newest team member all went back to the Silar Creek case. Gideon felt like Jack was holding out on him about it, and Morgan knew that burned the seasoned profiler. He sighed; flashed Prentiss a blinding smile. "He's a professional; I wouldn't worry about that."

Emily Prentiss had known her share of charmers, and Derek Morgan was definitely one. He tried to get around her with those quick, easy smiles and smooth lines, but she wasn't fooled; she had never been an easy woman to get around. She studied him for several long moments before nodding slowly. "Whatever you say, Morgan. You've known him longer than I have."

* * *

"This is the entirety of Peter McCall's CIA file?" an incredulous Aaron Hotchner asked a rather mortified Penelope Garcia.

"I'm so sorry, sir. Nothing else is available. I mean, I could try hacking into the CIA database…?" She trailed off, and Hotch didn't like the excited gleam in her eyes.

"No, Garcia, that's out of the question. I should have known, based on EJ's file, that we'd get the dummy version. I'll put in a formal request for the full contents." He rifled through the slender file with a frown of consternation. "This is ridiculous," he muttered.

"I agree, sir. And if you want my opinion, I seriously doubt the CIA's going to cough up any more than that."

"They're naturally secretive, of course, but I'm sure they want the murders of two of their agents solved as soon as possible."

She frowned; looked away.

"What is it, Garcia?" he said.

"I got the run around for nearly two hours before I even got that much, and they acted like I was requesting the combination to that weird man-size safe Cheney keeps in his office."

Hotch spared a brief smile for her color commentary. "I'm sure you did your best. They probably just want a request from higher up; that's how they know you're really serious. Tell me what you have on the other victims."

She turned back to the computer. A moment later six pictures flashed up on the various screens. "The first two victims were both male, late twenties. They were employees of the locations targeted: a small restaurant and an antiques boutique, both in DC. David Coventry, twenty-eight, had been working at Tippy Taco for two years. Anthony Birch, twenty-six, had only been employed at Second Chances for six months."

Hotch nodded as he absorbed the information. "It doesn't seem as though the businesses themselves are the targets."

"No," Garcia agreed. "All four attacks occurred at off hours when only one or two people were at the location. Alyssa Horton was a customer and John Dempsey an employee at the Kwik Stop in Arlington, VA; that was the first double murder."

"Any information from the Agency about Alyssa?"

She shook her head. "Like getting blood from a stone, sir. The only reason I got that poor excuse for McCall's file is because he's retired."

"Retired?" He flipped a few pages. "It says that specifically. He retired from the CIA at age thirty and joined the Metro PD six months later."

"Who retires at thirty?" she said.

"I don't know," Hotch said with a deeply furrowed brow. "But I'm betting EJ does."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gideon turns up the pressure on Jackson, and Garcia uncovers something big.

**but the fantasy slipped as he tipped her in cigarettes**  
 **she tries to smile very graciously when she wants to kill him**  
Elvis Costello, "My Dark Life"

"You're kidding me, right?" Elliot Jackson said, her voice raising an octave as anger swept over her in a red wave.

He just stared at her, sphinx-like.

"Come on, Jason!" she cried. "This is bullshit and you know it." The two agents were in his office, the place where she'd come six months before to essentially beg him to give her a chance at the BAU. Now, after working closely together, after solving dozens of cases, he was telling her that he planned to put in a request for her transfer back to the CIA. Apparently the semi-permanent loan was over, at least as far as Jason Gideon was concerned.

He shrugged and lifted his hands in a helpless gesture. "There's nothing I can do."

"You're making the request; you just told me so. How can there be nothing you can do? Just don't do it." She stopped to catch her breath; ran a shaking hand through her short hair. "I don't understand," she continued in a small voice. "Why are you being like this?"

His glare was stony. "You didn't trust me, Jack. You knew Reid was in trouble, you suspected it was drugs, and you didn't come to me. If you can't trust me with something like that, why should I trust you?"

She pulled back almost like he'd struck her. "This is why I didn't trust you, Gideon! I came to you six months ago; I showed you my file; I put all my cards on the table. You held out on me. What was I supposed to do? I'm not a tattletale. Reid has some responsibility in this, too."

"The past is the past. You can't change it now."

A line appeared between her brows as she frowned. "You sound like a fortune cookie."

He flashed a thin, brief smile of appreciation. "I just want the truth, Elliot. You know that. It's all I've ever wanted."

She turned away, arms crossed over her chest. "I don't know it."

"You know something."

"Nothing…that matters," she murmured, her glass-green gaze trained on the view from his office window.

"You've been doing this job long enough to know that everything matters," he said patiently.

"Taj could not have been involved with what happened at Silar Creek, Gideon."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do, okay?" she said, whipping around to face him. "He would have told me, or I would have seen it. One way or the other, I would've known."

"He was a spy, Jack, a professional secret keeper. You told me yourself spies are hard to read; they keep secrets too well. He might have kept this one even from you."

She rubbed her face with shaking hands. "If you think I could have been so close to the Silar Creek Slayer for so long without knowing it, why the hell did you let me on your damn team? Was it just so you could find out what I know, solve the case? And now when you think you're close, you're holding the BAU over my head? Tell you what you want and I get to stay; don't, and I'm shipped back to the Agency."

He sighed and perched on the edge of the desk. "Your opinion of me must not be very high if you think that."

"I don't know what to think at this point."

The silence stretched taut as he stared at her. Finally he said, "I'm not saying your friend killed anyone; I'm saying he knew something about it, and that's why he's dead now."

"And the other victims?"

"Alyssa Horton was connected to the Agency. We both know McCall worked the Silar Creek case. You tell me."

She shook her head. "Have you talked to Hotch about this, Jason? Doesn't he have to approve transfers in or out of the team?"

"I have approval, too. I only went to him about you out of courtesy."

"And you don't think it would be courteous to tell him that now you've changed your mind?"

"He doesn't understand the situation as fully as I do."

She stared at him with hurt and betrayal like a storm in her normally clear green eyes. "I can't believe this. I can't believe it. I got you the files; what more information can I give you?"

"How did you get them so fast, Jack? I know how hard those files are to access; I've tried. You got a promise for them in forty-five minutes."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm concerned, that's all. Concerned that your ties to the Agency might be stronger than you've led us to believe."

"You think I'm a mole? Why the hell would the Agency put a mole in the BAU, of all the damn places?"

"I have no idea. You've become awfully close to Spencer, and you said yourself the Agency loves his type of super-genius. Or maybe it's to get close to me."

"Spencer and I have grown close because we relate. We're the same age, and we've both lived unorthodox lives due to natural abilities that set us apart from our peers. And if I were sent to get close to you, well I've certainly dropped the ball on that one, haven't I?"

He waved it away. "I don't really think you're a mole, Elliot." He sighed, face set in somber lines. "I'll hold the request for now, but I need to know that you're truly a member of this team."

"How can I prove that to you? Do I need to get kidnapped with every member of the team before you believe me?"

"I just need your full cooperation on this case. I need everything you know about Silar Creek."

Her temper reached the breaking point. "Fuck you, Jason," she whispered in a small, choked voice. "You have it. You know perfectly well you have it." His silence was like a wave at its crest, all bottled energy set to explode, and she slammed out of his office without waiting for his next pithy comment.

* * *

Reid was nearly bowled over coming off the elevator as Jack stormed past him. He pressed his hand against the sliding panel to keep it from closing and studied her with worried hazel eyes. Her fury was obvious, and he hadn't seen her looking so hurt and angry the entire time he'd known her—and he'd recently pissed her off pretty thoroughly. "What's wrong?" he said.

She shook her head in wordless ire. "Can't talk now. Let go; I need air."

He did let go, but he stepped into the elevator beside her. She shot him a glare. "I need air alone, Spencer."

"Not a chance. I've got a lot of ground to make up, and I guess I can start by letting you vent on me." He pushed the button, and they both watched as the doors slid closed. "JJ told me about your friend; I'm sorry," he offered after a moment.

She softened a fraction. "Thank you," she said. "I am, too." They got off on the first floor and left through the lobby to wander the sprawling grounds. The spring day she'd been so looking forward to that morning had lived up to its promise: the sun was high and bright in a blindingly blue sky, and the daffodils and crocuses bloomed in colorful profusion. It was all lost on her, and her pace was so fueled by her anger that he, with his much longer legs, struggled a little to keep up.

"What happened up there?" he finally said.

"I can't—it's so—!" She nearly stomped her foot in fury. "Gideon wants to transfer me back to the Agency."

He stopped cold. "What? Why would he do that?"

She had blown past him, and now she, too, paused; turned to face him. "He says he doesn't trust me. Partly because I didn't tell him about my suspicions about you, but also…how much did JJ tell you about this case?"

He shrugged. "She filled me in on the shooting victims, and then she told me it might be connected to an old case of yours."

Sighing, she gestured to a nearby bench. They settled, and she took a moment to organize her thoughts. "Gideon thinks I know more about the old case than I'm telling him. It's sort of his…his Moby Dick, this case. The Agency refused his offers of assistance, and it's always burned him."

"Do you? Know more, I mean."

"Honestly?" She let out a little breath and wouldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know. It was…it was a strange time. I wanted to put that case down so damn bad, but it just wasn't happening. We were almost relieved when we were shut down."

"It sounds like it haunts you as much as it does Gideon," he observed.

"I—" She hesitated; considered. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Maybe," he agreed mildly, mouth quirking.

She huffed out a small chuckle, but sobered quickly. "I don't want to go back."

He reached over and, after a brief hesitation, took her small hand in his larger one. "You won't have to, Jack. We'll mutiny." He kept his mind clear and focused on how much she'd meant to the team—and to him—in just the short time they'd known each other.

"You saved my life, you know," he said.

She snorted. "You wouldn't have been kidnapped at all if it weren't for me."

"Not necessarily. He might have sent me with JJ." He rubbed his thumb against hers. "We agreed no blame. Remember?"

"Yeah." A puff of wind blew flower petals from a nearby tree. She held out her free hand to catch some, and a few landed in her palm. "I don't really believe in luck," she said.

His face scrunched. "Yeah, me neither. What does that have to do with—?"

She looked at him, a rueful tilt to her mouth. "I don't believe in luck, but—first you, then Taj? Seems like the men I spend my time with have had a rough go of it lately."

"Oh." He mulled it over. Finally, "Well…I guess some people are worth the risk. And, after all, we don't believe in luck."

She squeezed his fingers in silent thanks, and they sat quietly enjoying the beautiful Virginia day. The case was like a shadowed specter hovering over them, but for a few moments at least, they were able to ignore it. Together.

* * *

They were only gone about twenty minutes, but when the two agents stepped through the BAU's etched glass doors, Jackson knew she was in trouble. Hotch stood outside his office, arms crossed over his chest, and his expression was thunderous. He gave her a long, pointed look before stepping into his office and leaving the door open. She cast Reid a rueful smile. "It seems I've been summoned. Go get settled in; I'll talk to you later."

His mouth twisted in response. "Good—thing that we don't believe in," he said.

She nodded and followed their Unit Chief into his lair. He was seated behind his desk perusing a file, and as she softly closed the door behind her, he glanced up. "Jackson. Sit down."

He wasn't calling her EJ. That couldn't be a good sign. She took the chair he indicated and wiped suddenly damp palms on the thighs of her dark slacks. "Hotch, listen—" she began in an attempt to forestall him.

"No, Elliot, you listen," he said. He dropped the file onto his desk and pinned her with one of his death glares. "I gave you a direct order. I don't know how things worked at the CIA, but here there is a chain of command that will be followed. Do you understand?"

She swallowed. "I…I was with Reid," she offered lamely. The look in his eyes reminded her of what had happened last time she and Reid had been off together. Of course, he'd been stoned off his gourd at the time…but still. "We didn't leave campus. What UNSUB is going to come for me here?"

"If your theory about an inside man is correct, then our UNSUB very well could. And you know full well that isn't the point." His face softened even as his frustration mounted. "EJ, you're an important member of this team, and what's more, we all care about you personally. After what happened to Reid in Georgia, and then to the two of you in St. Augustine…I don't think this team can afford another incident like that."

She looked away; blinked hard. "Thank you, Hotch. I'm sorry; it won't happen again."

"No," he replied mildly, "it won't." A small silence fell between them as he watched her. "Now tell me why you stormed out of here like a bat out of hell. Is this about Detective McCall? Do you need to pull back?"

"I…no, it was unrelated. At least, mostly."

He waited for her to say more, but the silence stretched and deepened. "EJ, talk to me," he said.

To her utter humiliation, she felt a tear slip down her cheek. She wiped it away furiously and met his intense stare. "It's Gideon. He's threatening to have me transferred out."

The only sign of his anger was a minute tightening of the skin around his eyes and mouth. She knew with Hotch, the smaller the signs, the hotter the fury. She sat back a little, desperately hoping it wasn't directed at her. An instant later he removed her doubts. "I'll talk to Jason. He sometimes forgets that people are more than just their behavior; they're human beings, too."

As though that matter were dealt with and closed, he slid a file toward her. "Fill in the blanks for me. Why did McCall retire from the Agency at age thirty?"

It took her a moment to catch up, but when she did, her face went smooth. "I don't know," she said, automatically.

Hotch's brow twitched in annoyance. "Don't do that with me, EJ. None of us have time for games."

The mask slipped, and she suddenly looked very young and utterly weary. "To be perfectly honest, Hotch, I really don't know. That was about three years ago; Taj and I weren't on great terms then. One day he was an agent, the next day my partner was inviting me to the retirement party. It took me somewhat by surprise, but I didn't press him about it."

"What caused the rift in your relationship?"

"Silar Creek," she said. "We worked it too hard. It burned us out. When I say we got nothing, I mean that almost literally. We know he used a small rope or fine cord to strangle these women. We know he got into their homes without a struggle; no forced entry. The attacks were fast and hard, and they had no chance to fight back." She shrugged. "Other than that, we were floundering. When the fourth girl was killed and they shut us down, we weren't surprised. We were just relieved as all hell the Slayer stopped killing."

He rubbed his brow. He was having one of those days he wished he could just rewind; everything had seemed so bright and promising as he lay in bed with Haley that morning. Then his phone had rung, and it had all gone to hell. He imagined EJ felt the same. "The case files arrived while you were out," he said.

"We're going to go over them with a fine tooth comb. Meet in the conference room in ten."

She nodded and rose. At the door she hesitated. "Thank you, Hotch," she said quietly without looking back at him.

"It's my job. I take care of my team." He paused. "Try to remember that in the future."

* * *

The team and Prentiss gathered in the conference room, and they all couldn't help but notice the elevated tension between Gideon and Jackson. They pointedly ignored one another, and Hotch glanced between the two with a severe frown. He had hoped his conversation with Jason could wait a bit, but it seemed like his old mentor was determined to mistrust the team's newest member. He sighed, decided to ignore it as they ignored each other, and got down to the business at hand.

"JJ is passing out copies of the files we recently obtained from the CIA. They're pretty thin, but EJ assures us it's everything."

"It is," she said before Gideon could offer his opinion.

Hotch eyed her a moment before continuing. "As noted earlier, the Silar Creek UNSUB used a thin cord to strangle his victims. Our current UNSUB uses a gun. In most cases that would negate them being the same person, but if we're dealing with an inside man, changing MO might be purposeful."

They all nodded in agreement as they studied the files. "No forced entry," Morgan noted. "It's possible the victims knew their attacker."

Jackson agreed. "We theorized that they did. Silar Creek is a small town; we suspected a local, and pretty much everyone knows everyone."

"Even the students? I know from boarding schools I've been to, students rarely have much to do with townies," Prentiss said.

Jackson paused; considered. "Good point. We thought it could possibly be a student; Andrea Talbot taught English at the school, so a student would have had easy access to her."

"Retaliation, maybe?" Reid said. "Revenge for bullying or a bad grade?"

Gideon shifted in his seat. "These types of attacks indicate an UNSUB the victims felt comfortable with. They most likely let him in; they turned their backs on him. Most school shooter types aren't the kid anyone wants to meet in a dark alley."

"Would an UNSUB who attacks women in their homes fit the same profile as a school shooter?" Morgan said.

Hotch shook his head. "No; most revenge killers choose to kill publicly so that they can in some way humiliate their victims. Klebold and Harris," he said in reference to the Columbine shooters, "taunted the other students as they shot them. They wrote a manifesto venting their grievances about the world. They intended to detonate bombs and commit suicide, but when the bombs didn't go off their plans changed. One-on-one attacks like this don't fit the same profile."

"All right, so let's rule out revenge-seeking students," Morgan said.

Prentiss drummed her fingers against the table a moment. "Does looking into this old case really help us? We have no way of knowing if they're even connected."

Before anyone could reply, Garcia pushed open the door. "Guys, I found something else. It's big."

"What is it, Garcia?" Hotch said.

"I did some digging. I mean, I did a _lot_ of digging. It looks like John Dempsey was Agency, too."

"You're kidding," Jackson said.

"I wish, princess. He was a student at Silar Creek Academy before your time, but I can't find any record that he ever graduated. At all. Anywhere. He disappears up until two years ago when he got the job at the Kwik Stop."

"Did all students go on to join the Agency?" Hotch said.

"No," Jackson said with a shake of her head. "It wasn't a requirement, just something that was strongly encouraged."

"There's more," Garcia said. "When Dempsey was at Silar Creek, Daniel Talbot was his academic advisor."

Reid's face scrunched as he tried to make sense of it. "Daniel Talbot? That's your partner, right?" he said to Jackson.

She looked even more shell-shocked than she had that morning, if such a thing were possible. "I had no idea Daniel was ever at Silar Creek," she said. "He never told me."

"Did he have some sort of special ability?" Gideon said.

"No, he was completely blinkered." At the older agent's skeptical look, she waved an impatient hand. "They never put two Specials together; it wasn't done."

"Enough," Hotch said in an eerie repeat of earlier. "If we're going to work this case, we have to trust one another. We're a team here." He nodded at Prentiss to include her. "We're going to assume that anything one of us says is the truth. Understood?"

Gideon's gaze didn't leave Jackson's face, but after a moment he nodded. "Understood," he said. "I apologize, Elliot," he told her, uncharacteristically humble, "I know you wouldn't outright lie to us."

She cocked a brow at him, but decided to take the apology in the spirit it was meant. "Thank you, Jason," she said. She hated coming across as surly, recalcitrant, and unprofessional, and Gideon was making her both look and feel all of the above. Hopefully some time apart, working the case separately, would soothe everyone's ruffled feathers. If she knew Hotch—and she felt like she did, after all this time—he was planning just such a cooling off period.

Hotch let out a deep sigh. "Now that that's settled…Morgan and Gideon, I want you to hit the recent murder scenes. Now that we know Dempsey was Agency, talk to all of his friends and coworkers. Garcia, keep looking at the other victims, especially Dempsey. EJ, Reid, stay here and keep working the profile on both UNSUBs. Detective Prentiss and I are going to Detective McCall's apartment. Any questions?"

"So we've decided that the two cases are connected after all?" Prentiss said.

"Three begins to make a pattern," Jackson said quietly.

"We're going to keep digging," Hotch cautioned. "I want to know what the hell we're dealing with here."

"So do we all," Gideon said, ruefully. His eyes landed on Jackson, then moved away, but she knew what that look meant: despite his placating words to Hotch, he still didn't trust her, and it would take a lot more than what she'd given him to change that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prentiss confronts Hotch. Reid and Jackson make a discovery. We visit Silar Creek circa 2002-2003.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the summary implies, there is a section of flashback in this chapter. It's all clearly labeled, so you should be fine. I didn't wanna spend too long on it, but I felt like we needed a firsthand glimpse at some of what went down. Next chapter we're back in the present.

**there was a kink in the world**  
**sent that statue tumbling**  
**an invitation east**  
**so we can watch it all crumbling**  
Elvis Costello, "My Dark Life"

Less than half an hour later Prentiss and Hotch were on their way to McCall's Arlington, VA apartment. Prentiss was feeling altogether nonplussed over the whole situation, and her impatience was beginning to reach critical mass. "Can I ask you a question?" she finally said, breaking the silence that had filled the Bureau-issue SUV since they'd left Quantico.

"Go ahead," Hotch said; his brow quirked a bit at her tone, both demanding and somehow respectful all at once.

"What the hell is going on here?" she shot back, her own finely-drawn brows drawing together over intense brown eyes. It was a simple question, and though she hoped for a simple answer, she knew she wasn't going to get it.

He kept his gaze trained on the road, glad for the excuse to avoid her glare. "Isn't that what we're trying to find out?" he said.

She shook her head. "With all due respect, Agent Hotchner, I'm not a rookie. Don't treat me like one. I know when I'm being cut out." She paused; took a breath. "Everyone knows who Jason Gideon is. He's famous for both his successes and his failures; I've even taken a few of his classes. But I'm pretty sure no one knows who the hell Elliot Jackson is. When someone I respect as much as Agent Gideon mistrusts someone so thoroughly, it makes me nervous.

"On the other hand," she continued, "Jackson was Taj's friend—sometimes lover—and he trusted her. Also, she'd apparently done something to earn the respect of the rest of your team." She eyed him. "I think maybe you see my conflict."

Hotch mulled it over a moment. "You've not known her very long, but what does your gut tell you?"

Prentiss frowned; studied the landscape whizzing past the window. "I think Gideon is overreacting about something," she finally said. "But it galls me that I don't know what it is. And what's the big deal about this school?"

Hotch drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, the only sign of the agitation her questions prompted. "Have you ever considered that maybe you're better off not knowing?"

She blinked. "What, like, ignorance is bliss? That's not a philosophy to which I subscribe."

His mouth twisted. "No," he mused, "I don't guess it would be."

"My department called you. Is it generally your policy to exclude the locals from key points of an investigation?"

He sighed; shifted restlessly. "Just the opposite, in fact," he said. "But, Detective Prentiss, this case is…sensitive."

"Damn straight. It's my partner on the slab."

"I assure you none of us have forgotten that."

"Then maybe be straight with me, okay? I don't need your condescension."

He struggled not to smile, afraid she'd take it wrong. "Yes, you've made that abundantly clear." He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "If you want to know Jackson's secrets, you'll have to ask her. She may tell you, she may not, but that's her decision to make. As for the rest of it—well, you know Detective McCall and Dr. Jackson are former CIA. Apparently the school is some sort of Agency recruitment program. I know only a little more than you do."

She nodded slowly as she digested what he was telling her. "You seemed to be including me in your team earlier, back in the conference room."

He glanced over at her quickly before returning his eyes to the road. He cleared his throat. "You're a good cop, Prentiss. You're smart, and you're tough. That much is obvious even after such a short acquaintance."

"But?" she said when he hesitated.

"But," he continued quietly, "you're not a member of my team. I want you to feel comfortable here during the course of this investigation; I want you to trust us, and I need to know that we can trust you. When this case is over, though, I need my team to still be a team, and if that means protecting some secrets, then I'll do it."

"When the dust settles, I'll be gone, but they'll have to carry on together," she said.

"Exactly. I don't mean to belittle you or offend you in any way, because I do respect your skills and I appreciate your help with this case."

"Well," she replied, turning her fierce gaze away from him, "I guess you've just put me in my place."

"Detective Prentiss, I—"

She shook her head quickly, hushing him. "It's fine, Agent Hotchner. I understand." She did understand, but that didn't make it any easier to swallow. Despite everything, she was still just a local to him—to them. She understood, but she couldn't help that small trickle of childish, irrational hurt.

Silence was their uneasy companion for the rest of the trip to Arlington, and Hotch felt like a genuine ass.

* * *

The conference room was a shambles of case files, crime scene photos, paper cups, and the various other accoutrements of a criminal investigation. Jackson had switched from gut-searing coffee to tea hours ago, and now she sipped her orange blossom jasmine concoction contemplatively as she studied the autopsy reports on the Silar Creek victims for perhaps the hundredth time.

"I feel like there's something I'm missing," she said. "It's like it's right here and I can't quite see it."

Reid glanced up at her from his own pile of reports and photos. "It looks like you guys were pretty thorough. I don't see anything right off hand that you might have overlooked."

She threw the file aside with a frustrated sigh and selected another from the pile. "Let's switch gears. Victimology for the recent murders?" she suggested.

"Good idea," he said, gaining his feet and moving to the crime board. "We have three victims who were currently or formerly Agency." He wrote on the dry erase board as he spoke, and Jackson nodded in agreement even as she marveled over his childish, scrawling handwriting. Super genius or not, he'd apparently been absent the day they taught penmanship.

"Right," she said. She focused her attention back on the report she held. "The first two victims, however, seem to be the exception."

Reid frowned. He took a few steps back to study the crime scene photos with a critical eye. "Hey, Jack, what type of weapon was used in the first two murders?"

Her brows flicked together as she flipped a few pages. "Umm, looks like a standard Saturday Night Special. A twenty-two. Piece of shit."

He nodded as though he'd known the answer before he'd asked it. "And the other four?"

She found the pages in question and blinked in surprise. "A thirty-eight, most likely a revolver." She frowned. "A revolver? No shell casings. Was he getting smarter?"

"No…" Reid said as he examined the pictures. His brow creased; jaw worked. She recognized the signs of his mighty brain in action, and she waited patiently for his thoughts. "Look at this," he said, pointing to the photos of the first scene, the taco restaurant. "The victim is shot several times in the chest, and he's sprawled out in front of the safe. It's more like the UNSUB…was interrupted? Or thought he might be?"

She rose to stand beside him, and her glass-green eyes narrowed as she compared the scenes. "Similar set-up in scene two," she remarked, "but with Horton and Dempsey and Taj and Nelson, it seems…"

"Different," he completed when she trailed off.

"Yes," she said. She reached behind her and grabbed the autopsy reports on Horton and Dempsey. She pointed at their pictures. "They were both shot in the chest, like the previous victims, but the ME concluded that the kill shot—the first shot—was this one to the back of the neck."

"Why would our UNSUB shoot the last four victims in the back of the neck, then in the chest?"

It was a rhetorical question, but she answered it anyway. "They're not the same person. The first UNSUB is killing them with the chest wounds, but there's a second one. He's a pro, but he's trying to make it look sloppy."

"Sloppy to switch weapons," Reid said.

She shrugged. "If it truly is a second UNSUB, then he wouldn't have had access to the first weapon. Forensics would've told us they were different even if they were the same caliber; switching to a revolver at least might make you think he was evolving, taking more forensic countermeasures."

"Jack," he said after a quiet, considerate moment, "if we're right, then it's more than likely these agents were the UNSUB's target. He chose to mimic the MO of this other UNSUB—"

"Why would he do that?" she said.

"Maybe because it was McCall's case?"

"Maybe, but—" She stopped abruptly. Her face creased in a deep frown, and he flinched at the sudden sound of her finger slapping against one of the photos.

"Tell me, boy genius," she said, "what's different about these two pictures?" She pointed to the first in the series from the Kwik Stop, then at a later one from the same scene.

He glanced back and forth between the two, and she watched as understanding lit his pensive features. "The safe," he said.

"The UNSUB didn't open it," she said.

"Why were Prentiss and McCall even called to this scene with the safe closed? It's outside their jurisdiction, and that was a pretty crucial part of the first UNSUB's MO."

"We'll have to ask Prentiss, but I bet you dinner it was Taj's idea."

"He knew the victims were Agency. He wanted to be on the case, so he got them invited in."

"UNSUB number two got antsy because Taj was sticking his nose in—again—so he decided to stage another attempted robbery."

"None of this makes sense, Jack," he said.

"I think it does, Spencer; we just don't have all the pieces yet. There's a huge one we're missing, and I think it all goes back to Silar Creek."

He was inclined to agree with her, but he decided to keep his mouth shut just this once. Jack and Gideon's obsession with the old case concerned him, and he didn't want to encourage it any more than he had to. He had a feeling that, before all this was over, they would all regret having ever heard of Silar Creek, Maryland and its hushed-up Slayer.

* * *

**Silar Creek, MD**  
**July 2002**  
Maryland in July. She had grown up down south, in Georgia, and she always suspected that Yankees spent their summers half-shivering in such silly getups as "summer sweaters." Who the hell ever heard of a summer sweater? No one south of the Mason-Dixon line, that's who. (a small disclaimer here: she, personally, cared nothing for the stupid Mason-Dixon line, but the deep south was the deep south, and some things are never forgotten)

One summer in Maryland had changed her mind. While certainly the July she was currently experiencing didn't quite measure up to the bone-melting, indolent heat and humidity combo Georgia had oozed out every summer of her childhood, Maryland definitely knew how to put on a show. At the moment the air around her was heavy, almost liquid; cicadas buzzed in the distance; the sky was a blinding, sun-washed azure. She sat back in her reclining lawn chair and let out a deep sigh; soaked in the sun's blazing light like she needed it to live. The drink in her hand was dripping cold, glistening drops down her flat stomach, and she enjoyed the shivering sensations as each little globe hit her skin.

She heard him before she saw him; he was whistling, something he did only rarely. She didn't open her dark eyes; just set the lemonade aside, held out her arms and let him fall into them. Their lips crashed together, and the heat of the day was nothing to the furnace blazing between them.

She laughed softly, a low, rippling chuckle, and when she finally did look at him, her smile only widened, a generous curve of full, strawberry-colored lips.

"You're late," she whispered against his mouth.

"I was busy." He kissed her again, greedily drinking in the sticky sweet-sour taste of lemons and woman. "How long do we have?" he said when he finally came up for air.

"Dan won't be back until tomorrow; he and Elliot went off on some case somewhere. You know I don't ask questions." She stroked her fingers through his blond curls and pulled him to her again.

They were instantly lost in each other, and the day around them faded. Andrea Talbot no longer cared about the oppressive heat or the general ennui of her life.

The man with her forgot that he was betraying a friend every time he touched her. And, perhaps most importantly, neither man nor woman noticed that they were not alone. A watcher stood in the long shadow of a huge, spreading oak, and with each illicit kiss the couple shared, his fury grew.

 **CIA Headquarters**  
**Langley, VA**  
**September 2002**  
"They won't let me be involved in the investigation, Jack," Daniel Talbot nearly whimpered. He sat slumped in an office chair, his hands fisted in his pale hair. When he looked up at her again, his cornflower blue eyes were wide and bloodshot. She raised her hand to give him a comforting, supportive pat, but at the last minute she let her arm fall away. He had almost seemed to flinch, and she couldn't blame him: some pain was better experienced alone.

Slightly frustrated by her own failure as a friend, she shook her head in a quick, whip-like motion. "Of course they won't, Dan," she said. "She was your wife. You're too close." She paused; crossed her arms over her chest. "Who's the lead?"

"Taj," he said. He peeked through his fingers to gauge her reaction.

Jackson went still, glass-green gaze suddenly far away. The silence thickened; began to set like a Jell-O mold. "Um," she finally managed. It was hardly adequate.

He let his hands fall away from his face and peered at her intently. "Um?"

"Um, good. He's a good agent." She fidgeted; looked away. He was a good agent: fair and thorough; and though Jackson knew he would work this case with everything he had, she also knew even that wouldn't be enough for her understandably distraught partner. She was afraid of where he was going, and she didn't like his line of thought at all. Neither of them had any business being involved in this case, and she wanted no part of it.

It was bad enough that the CIA was investigating a case on American soil, and cutting the FBI out of what was legally their jurisdiction; the last thing this case needed was someone with a personal stake in it mucking things up even further.

He recognized the signs of her growing nervousness, and he decided to push her a bit. "You could call him, maybe? Ask how things're going?"

Her brow creased. "I don't know, Dan, that doesn't—"

"They might put you on it if you asked," he said. "I mean, with the new body—"

"She had a name, Dan," she said in a tired, cross voice. She sighed; rubbed the back of her neck with a weary hand. She assessed him with clear, knowing eyes.

"You really want me on this?" she said.

Would she feel the same way if it were her spouse of ten years who'd just been murdered? Probably. It didn't make the thought of going back to Silar Creek and investigating Andrea's death any easier to stomach.

"Yeah, Jack. I want you on it. I trust you; I trust Taj. I know the two of you will take care of Andrea." His voice was quiet and intense, and she knew he'd won.  
She spread her hands in a shrug, her expression resigned. "When you put it like that, how can I refuse?"

 **Silar Creek, MD**  
**November 2002**  
"You know what they call things like this, Agent Jackson?"

"A clusterfuck?" she deadpanned.

Peter "Taj" McCall snorted out a laugh and shook his dark head. "True, but that wasn't what I was talking about. I meant you and me. Here." He gestured back and forth between them, and she stared at him blankly as he raised his brows at her. "It's kismet!" he finally said. _"Kismet,_ Jack. You and me, together again. It's a sign from the Universe."

She breathed a skeptical little huff. "Do you honestly buy into your own BS, or do you just love the sound of your voice that much?"

He shrugged easily, and his grin was irrepressible. "Both, I think." He lifted the yellow crime tape and allowed her to duck under it ahead of him.

She rolled her eyes, but her lips twitched as she tried to keep from smiling. She knew his humor was to counteract their equal and shared horror at having to visit the scene of another girl's murder. It was the third killing by the man locals were dubbing the Silar Creek Slayer, and so far neither the local cops nor the CIA had anything to go on. "No forced entry. Again," she said as she struggled with the uncomfortable latex gloves.

He pulled on his own with ease, and then reached over to assist her. "You're one badass cop, Jackie Brown."

"What can I say? Pam Grier I am not. Okay, focus. No forced entry."

His face smoothed as his professional mask fell into place. "She was a student at the Academy, too. No roommate."

Jackson shook her head. "How horrible. You send your kid off to school, and next thing you know…" She trailed off, face set in tense, brooding lines. "They're supposed to be safe. Here, of all places, they should be safe."

The hollowness he heard in her voice bothered him; he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and studied her intently. Which one of them would burnout first, he wondered. She was young; too young to be seeing shit like this and jumping through Agency hoops; but she was resilient. This case and those like it, and doubts like the ones he was currently having, made him feel ancient. Methuselah McCall.

"Taj? You okay?" The cop mask had slipped momentarily, and she had seen…something. Something she didn't understand. Uncertainty and doubt and darkness.  
He grinned again, and it was like the moment had never happened. "All systems go, partner mine. Let's walk the scene, shall we? She was killed in there…"

 **January 2003**  
Four women dead. Four lives snuffed out, three of them high school girls barely out of childhood. Andrea Talbot. Jessica Martin. Sarah Gold. Katherine Gordon. The names ran through his head in a constant litany, and he couldn't shake the memory of their death-glazed eyes. This case, he felt, would be the death of him.

"Taj?" Her voice floated through his thoughts like a leaf on the wind, and he realized from her tone that it wasn't the first time she'd called his name.

He cleared his throat and hastily cut the power to his computer monitor; blanked his mind. "Jack, what's up?"

Jackson's brows drew together as she watched him. "Um. Taj, listen, are you okay?"

She'd probably asked him that five thousand times in the months since she'd first said it, at Sarah Gold's off-campus apartment when the weight of the case had seemed suddenly so heavy. Looking back, he knew back-then Taj hadn't realized how good he'd had it. He envied back-then Taj. Just-now Taj felt like both Methuselah _and_ Atlas. "Yeah. I'm fine. What's that?" he said, indicating the file she held.

"Oh," she said as though she'd forgotten it, "it's Katherine Gordon's autopsy results. Want to—"

"No," he interrupted hastily. "No, I don't think I can stomach another autopsy right now."

She paused. "Okay," she said after a tense little moment. "It can wait. What were you working on?"

He would have to lie to her. She wouldn't read him, but she knew him well, and the less he had to lie, the better. "Uh, oh, just my report. You know, updating the boss."

A fine brow rose over a perceptive green eye. "Do you need my input?"

He fidgeted a little. "Nope, it's all good. I'm pretty much done."

"I…" She crossed her arms over her stomach. "Taj, what's going on?"

He sighed; ran a hand through his closely-cropped hair and down over his face. His cheeks were rough with stubble, and he knew he looked like shit. She would have made a mental note of that, too. "You trust me, right?"

His voice was serious, minus all its usual levity, and she stared at him intently. "I trust you as much I trust anyone here," she said, carefully.

"I guess that's the best I can hope for."

She chewed the inside of her lower lip. What the hell was going on with him? What the hell had changed so drastically in the last few months? "You could level with me, Taj. That would help."

He looked away; back. His face was tight, eyes pleading. "There are some things you're better off not knowing."

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly; considered her next words with care. "I don't buy that," she said, "but I know it's just shop talk for butt out, so I'm going to take your advice."

"Thank you, Jack."

She nodded once, crisply. "Don't make me regret it."

"I can't make any promises" was his bleak, bitter reply.

She found herself grimly unsurprised and thoroughly disappointed in them both, an uneasy mix of emotions that gave her the mental equivalent of indigestion. Sometimes, Jackson reflected wearily, she really hated her job.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garcia drops yet another bombshell. Jackson is stunned when she learns the UNSUB's possible identity. Hotch refuses her offer to step back from the case.

**on a gathering storm comes**  
 **a tall handsome man**  
 **in a dusty black coat with**  
 **a red right hand**  
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, "Red Right Hand"

"I don't think I can break into this, sir," Garcia admitted reluctantly as she stared at the screen of Taj McCall's laptop. A dismayed little frown sat uncomfortably on her normally cheerful face. The computer was demanding a password, and it warned her that she had five tries before the entire hard drive was erased. "He wouldn't use such fancy protection if he didn't have something important on here," she said.

The furrows etched on Hotch's brow deepened as he watched his tech analyst tap a few keys with hesitant flaming pink-tipped fingers. "It's okay, Garcia," he said. "We don't want to risk that."

"You know," Prentiss said after a brooding silence, "we should ask Dr. Jackson."

"You think he might've told Jack his password?"

"Knowing Taj, probably not," Prentiss said. "But he told me to contact her if anything happened to him. He might have made his password something that she could guess."

Hotch nodded his agreement and hit the button on Garcia's phone that connected him to the conference room. When Reid answered, Hotch explained the situation to him, and a few minutes later, both Reid and Jackson were squeezing into Garcia's cubby.

"You found Taj's laptop?" Jackson said as she peered over Garcia's shoulder. "Five tries and it's wiped. Well that sucks."

"My thoughts exactly," Prentiss said with a small curve of her lips. "Think you might have an idea of what his password could be?"

She started to shake her head, but Hotch held up a hand. "Think hard, EJ. It might be something that would be significant to the two of you. An anniversary, maybe? Or your birthday?"

Her mouth opened; closed; lifted sardonically. "He could never remember my birthday, and we didn't really have an anniversary per se. Taj was awful with dates."

He made an impatient gesture. "Okay, then, something it could be. Work with me, EJ."

"All right, all right, I'm thinking. I guess try my birthday, just for giggles. No one would ever think of Taj using a date."

Garcia typed in the appropriate digits (she was the one who always planned inter-office birthday events, and unlike Detective McCall, she was very good with dates), but it was quickly rejected. "Not it. Four tries left."

The other agents let out simultaneous sighs of frustration. "How about just her name? It's simple, but not something anyone would accidentally stumble upon," Reid suggested.

"Why are we assuming the password has anything to do with me?"

Prentiss explained her theory again, and Jackson nodded in reluctant agreement. "Okay, that makes sense. But he would know…" She trailed off, and her small face creased in concentration.

"What?" Hotch said.

"He would know I would never guess my birthday or anything super obvious." She chewed the inside of her lower lip a moment, then leaned across Garcia to tap a few keys. "No, no," she muttered as the program again rejected the entry. "Think, Jackie Brown, think."

Reid raised a brow in Hotch's direction, and he shrugged, just as mystified as his younger colleague. Jackson drummed her fingers against the desk in a steady tattoo. She closed her eyes and thought of Taj—his smile; his frown; the way he rubbed his face when he was frustrated; his irreverent sense of humor.

"Nosy bastard," she murmured with a grin before typing again. This time her entry was accepted, and Taj's laptop was open to Garcia's skilled snooping.

"What was it?" Hotch said with a small, nonplussed smile.

Jackson shrugged; looked a bit sheepish. "One of my old Agency login passwords. He was always looking over my shoulder, and he would tease me about my password because he said it was too obvious; it seemed fitting."

"All right, my loves, let's see what the Queen of All Knowledge can unearth for you!" Garcia said as she searched the computer. "Ooo, look at this; pictures!"

"If it's porn, I'm leaving," Prentiss said.

"I don't think so, peaches; they look like surveillance photos to me."

"Let me see those," Jackson said, leaning over Garcia's shoulder again. Her brow creased as she studied the images on the screen. "That's Talbot," she said, pointing at the man most often pictured.

"Your former partner Talbot?" Hotch said.

Jackson nodded. "The same. Why would Taj be keeping tabs on Daniel?"

"Oh, my little Jackiepoo, that's not all he was doing," Garcia said as she ran a search on Talbot's name. Hit after hit popped up, and the analyst opened the first file at hand—an email.

As Jackson read what Taj had written, the color drained from her face, and she felt suddenly and desperately ill. "I would've preferred porn," she said.

* * *

"No, it's not possible. I can't believe it," Jackson said again and again, like a mantra.

"He never told you of his suspicions?" Hotch said. He kept his voice carefully neutral.

They had left Garcia to her work, and were once again gathered in the conference room. Hotch had had to practically drag EJ from Garcia's cubby; she was adamant that McCall had to be mistaken. She refused to accept the possibility that Daniel Talbot could be the killer she'd hunted for so long

"Absolutely not," she said, shaking her head in quick, urgent denial.

"It makes sense, though," Reid said as he passed her a plastic cup of water. "You said you suspected an inside man—"

"That's hardly what I meant!" she cried. "Daniel's wife was the Slayer's first victim. He asked me to join the investigation. Why the hell—"

"EJ," Hotch said, "did he check in with you about how the case was progressing?"

"Well, yes, of course, he—" Her mouth closed with an abrupt snap, and she suddenly became deeply engrossed in the shifting surface of the water she held.

"He couldn't work the case himself because of the personal connection, but asking his partner to help would be both understandable, and also it would allow him to keep up with what was happening," Reid said, explaining what they all already knew.

She took a small sip, but then set the cup aside with a shudder. "I just can't believe it," she repeated in a dull, raw voice.

"You said you called Talbot about the Silar Creek case files. Was he surprised to hear from you? How did he sound?" Hotch said.

She sat back; let out a sigh and stared at the ceiling as she struggled to remember. It had only been that morning, but it felt like a hundred years ago. "We chatted for a few minutes—how are you, I'm fine, how's the Bureau—just small talk."

"How long had it been since you last spoke to him?"

"I got back to Langley after we were pulled off of the Slayer case, and he was gone. Then, like I said, he called me to tell me Taj was retiring."

"Gone?" Reid said. His face scrunched. "Gone where?"

She shrugged. "Deep cover, I assumed, because no one would tell me. Apparently he'd requested reassignment."

"Did you think it odd?"

She looked away; her jaw worked as she considered her answer.

"EJ, listen to me. I know Gideon is giving you a hard time about this case, and I know you're struggling to trust each other. I need to know that Gideon's suspicions are misplaced. I need to know that you trust us the way we've all trusted you these past months." His voice was gentle, but there was a current of steel running through it. She knew that tone: when he used it, he meant business. It was time to quit giving him the run around and come clean. As clean as she could.

"Taj never told me he suspected Daniel was the Slayer, but I knew he was keeping something from me. He was acting…weird. At first I thought it was just the pressures of the case, but finally I realized there was something more going on."

"What did you do?" Hotch said in that same soft, hard tone.

"I…" She looked into his penetrating, light brown eyes, and her face was stricken. "I let it slide. I didn't press him. The truth is I didn't want to know what was making him so…dark. So not-Taj."

Hotch sighed, and concern lined his face. "We've all done it, EJ."

Her mouth quirked. "I bet you haven't."

Except, of course, he had, and they both knew it. He could have (should have?) confronted Reid about his suspicions, but he'd let it go. Left him to work it out.  
He cleared his throat; grimaced. "That's not really the point," he said.

Prentiss hid a snicker with a cough, and Reid's mouth twisted. Jackson just quirked her brows. "Aaron Hotchner: a real American hero," she said. He didn't miss the irony in her tone, even if the others might have.

"All right, enough. How did Talbot react when you requested the files?"

She ran a hand back through her short hair. "He didn't hesitate. He said he was glad someone was reopening the case, because he hated that Andrea never got justice."

"Exactly the sort of thing you'd expect a grieving widower to say," Reid said.

"Well, yes," Jackson said, "which is certainly not proof that he's anything _but_ a grieving widower."

Reid blinked at her convoluted syntax, unsure whether to agree or disagree with her. In the end, he decided that a sage nod was the safest reply.

"Okay, so, where does all this leave us?" Prentiss said.

"It depends," Reid said. "Do we think the Slayer is the same person as the UNSUB who shot McCall, Dempsey, and Horton?" They had filled Prentiss and Hotch in on their earlier ballistics discoveries, and they all agreed that two UNSUBs seemed the most plausible theory.

"Alyssa fits the Slayer's victimology, but Dempsey and Taj don't. Why would Daniel want to kill Taj? Or Dempsey, his former student?" Jackson said.

"I think I might have an idea," Garcia said from the doorway before anyone else could answer. The look on her face froze Jackson's heart, and she knew whatever Garcia had to say, she probably wasn't going to like it.

* * *

"That email we found was just the first of dozens. Our Detective McCall was quite the pen pal. Or…keyboard pal…whatever. Anyway," Garcia explained in a breathless rush as she opened Taj's laptop on the conference room table and began flipping through documents, "he had quite the correspondence with John Dempsey, and nearly all the emails—except the ones about baseball—were about Daniel Talbot."

Jackson drew in a little breath, but before she could speak, Hotch nodded for Garcia to continue. Garcia darted a glance between the two agents, but Hotch's stern gaze beat out Jackson's imploring one, and she dove back into her spiel. "It looks like Detective McCall suspected Talbot as the Slayer from way back, and so did Dempsey."

"Dempsey did? How does that work?" Jackson said.

"Apparently at some point during the course of their working relationship, Talbot completely flipped out on Dempsey. He doesn't go into details, but it scared him enough to request assignment away from Silar Creek, and as far away from Daniel Talbot as he could get—that's why he drops off the grid so completely," she said. "McCall was calling in all his favors to find this guy, because he thought Dempsey had the piece of information he needed to prove Talbot's guilt."

"Did he?" Reid said.

Garcia shook her head, nearly dislodging the flower in her hair as her pigtails swung wildly. "Nope, apparently not. He just had his instincts and a deep, sudden fear of his old mentor."

"Good work, Garcia," Hotch said. "Let us know if you find—"

"There's more, sir."

He raised a brow at her, and she smiled. "McCall asked Dempsey to keep tabs on Talbot for him. That's where all these pictures are from. They were working together to make the case against Talbot. One of the last emails in here is from Alyssa Horton telling McCall to back off."

"Why would Horton care?" Prentiss said.

Garcia shrugged. "I don't know. McCall didn't answer her, and a day later she and Dempsey were dead."

"Well Taj didn't kill them, if that's what you're thinking," Prentiss said with a deep frown.

"She's right; there's no way," Jackson agreed vehemently. "And it wouldn't make sense anyway: Taj and Dempsey were working together, so why would Taj kill him?"

Hotch cleared his throat, and the quiet sound sliced through the building tension like a knife. The two women sat back, and Jackson took a sip of water in lieu of more words. "I'm going to call Morgan and Gideon back here; I doubt they've gotten much from the interviews anyway. We'll brief them on what we've learned so far, and I'm going to ask JJ to get us invited to Silar Creek."

He watched them all through shrewd, expectant eyes, but they wisely kept quiet. "In the meantime, Garcia, keep digging. Prentiss, Reid, EJ, work the profile. I'm going to see if I can get the Agency to cough up anything about Daniel Talbot." He rose, straightened his cuffs, and strode from the conference room.

Prentiss let out a long breath as the door closed behind him. "He's hardcore."

"You've got no idea," Reid told her with a small twist of his mouth. He passed out copies of the emails and photographs Garcia had brought them.

"You guys get started," Jackson said, "and I'll be right back."

They watched her go with puzzled frowns. "Now what's that about?" Prentiss said.

"I don't know." He hesitated; rifled through the file in front of him without really seeing the contents. "You should know things aren't usually like this," he offered after a moment.

"How so?" she said with a lifted brow.

"So scattered. Hotch;" Reid's lips quirked; "he runs a tight ship. It's just…there was a—an abduction?" He frowned, hating how he made it sound like a question; cleared his throat. "That is, Jack and I were abducted. By an UNSUB. Last week…?"

"Ohh," Prentiss said, eyes going a little wide. "I'm sorry to hear that." She wasn't really sure of the proper etiquette in a situation like this, but surely _I'm sorry_ was a safe bet.

"It wasn't a big deal. I mean it, uh, it was. But we're fine. Now we're fine. I mean—that's what's wrong with her face. In case you're wondering. And her hands. But—we're fine." He stuttered to an exasperated stop and sighed. Why was he telling her all of this, and why was he making such a mess of it? "I guess we're all getting our legs back still," he managed. He buried his face in the file and hoped his neck wasn't turning as red as it felt.

She watched as the color crept up his long neck and around his ears. "Well," she said at last, "I'm glad you're fine now."

* * *

Hotch stared down at the phone on his desk with a deep frown. This case was getting deeper and darker than he had ever expected, and he had a sneaking suspicion that the CIA already knew Peter McCall's theory about the Silar Creek Slayer. Daniel Talbot had lived and worked in Silar Creek, a fact he'd kept from his partner. His wife was a teacher at the school, making him easily recognizable to students and locals. He'd kept tabs on the investigation through EJ's involvement. He knew enough to take the sort of forensic countermeasures the Slayer used.

Hotch was frustrated and annoyed. He understood now why this case had stuck with Gideon and EJ over the years. Why McCall had cashed in all his old Agency chips to find Dempsey. Why EJ hadn't pressed McCall about his theory. If they didn't put this son of a bitch down, Hotch thought it just might haunt him the rest of his career.

He was reaching for the phone when a knock interrupted him. He wasn't sure whether to be relieved or irritated—he didn't want to make the call, but he had to—and the mixed emotions came through in his voice as he called for the person to enter. He found himself unsurprised when Elliot Jackson poked her head around the door, and he dropped the receiver back into its cradle with a raised brow. "Can I help you?"

She blinked, momentarily taken aback by the shortness in his tone. "Am I interrupting?"

A smile flickered. "No, sorry. What do you need, EJ?"

She took a hesitant step into his office and closed the door behind her. With a shaky smile, she found the same chair she'd sat in when he'd given her the dressing down earlier. "Hotch, I…this morning you told me to come to you if this case got too personal. You told me to tell you when I needed to back off." She paused; took a breath. "I think it has. I think I do."

He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest; fixed her with a stern, quintessentially Aaron Hotchner Look. He studied her with the knowing, penetrating gaze for a long time, long enough to make her fidget, before he sat forward again. "I think you're wrong." His voice was stern, straightforward, and unequivocal.

"Um. I'm sorry?" Her glass-green eyes widened a fraction in surprise; that wasn't the answer she'd been expecting.

He sighed; rubbed a hand over his face. "I know what I told you, EJ, but I think we both need to reconsider. This is your case, has been since the beginning, and if I let you walk away now you'll never forgive either of us."

She turned her head to avoid looking at him. "Gideon doesn't want me here, Hotch, and once he finds out about Talbot—"

"You let me deal with Jason. I'm going to send you home with—" He stopped; remembered Elle; revised the thought. "I'm going to get Morgan to take you home once he and Gideon get back here, and we'll all meet up Monday morning to head to Silar Creek. EJ," he said in a suddenly quiet, intense voice, "we need you in Silar Creek. No one knows it like you do."

She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair for a few moments, but at last she nodded. "People don't often surprise me," she said, turning to meet his gaze.

The flickering smile again. "Nor I, but you manage it sometimes. The fact that you asked me to pull you shows how much you've grown since you got here. Do you remember the basement, with Lloyd Henry?"

Jackson smoothed her palms over the thighs of her dark slacks. "I try not to," she admitted.

"I know. It was your first case, and Henry got to you."

"I should've known I couldn't hide it from you, even though I tried."

He shrugged. "It's my job." A great many words hung in the silence between these stilted sentences: he had perhaps saved her life in the basement, or maybe she, his. Either way, that moment of near-panic she'd experienced, the instant where her tight, careful control had given way to pure terror, had been—she thought—her own secret weakness to remember. Or try to forget. But of course Hotch knew. Had always known. And had let her do with it what she would.

She wondered, briefly, how the same technique had gone so horribly wrong when applied to Reid. She watched him watch her wonder it, and his eyes flickered with some nameless emotion. Regret? Grief? Or just annoyance that she refused to let it go?

Before she could get a handle on it, he cleared his throat, breaking the moment, and checked his watch. "Morgan and Gideon will be back soon. Go get some tea; work on some old paperwork; clear your mind of this case for a bit. You can come back Monday with fresh eyes."

For the second time that day she found herself thanking her boss for what came naturally to him: the ingrained, almost second-nature way he looked out for the people he cared about. A part of her wanted to know where that instinct in him came from, and another part of her just accepted it at face value, the way she accepted hardly anything else in her life. She knew that while there were few people or things in this world worth trusting, Aaron Hotchner was one. Shaking her head, she left him to his work and went to do as he suggested.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This seems to be mostly character work with a case sort of built around it. I'm okay with that. Hope y'all are too.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gideon goads Jackson into revealing what finally drove her away from the CIA.

**she came off like light and so softly she spoke:**  
**"you don't know, no you don't know about my dark life"**  
**and you think you're a guest, you're a tourist at best**  
**peering into the corners of your dark life**  
Elvis Costello, "My Dark Life"

"Hey, pint size," Morgan said. "Guess who's back?"

"Backstreet?" she said without looking up.

"Funny. Good to see you still got jokes. Come on; one last meet up in the conference room before we call it for the night."

"I assume Gideon came back with you."

"You assume right. He and I talked some, and he's maybe calmed down. A little. You know how he can get."

Her lips twitched. "Hotch said he sometimes forgets people are more than just their behavior."

"Hotch knows what he's talkin' about. Grab your tea and let's go. I don't know about you, but the sooner I get home to my dog the happier I'm gonna be."

"I didn't know you had a dog," she said as she gathered her files and fell in step beside him.

"There's a lot you don't know about me. I'm a man of mystery."

She snorted. "Mhmm, you and Austin Powers." She disappeared into the conference room before he could reply, and he followed her with a scowl. At least she still had her sense of humor.

Once they were all seated, Hotch had each group recap what they'd found out. First, Reid and Jackson discussed the two UNSUBs angle. Gideon and Morgan did a rundown of what they'd gotten during their canvas: not much, as it turned out. Finally the conversation turned to Garcia's discoveries, and that's where things started to go south.

"So you're saying Jack's partner could be our UNSUB? Silar Creek Slayer and this shooter all in one?" Gideon said.

"It's just a theory, Gideon," Jack said.

"A solid one," Hotch said with a quick, quelling glance at her. "He fits the profile—though this case, or cases, have been harder to profile than most. The change in MO, victimology…"

"The UNSUB switched from a drive to kill, the Silar Creek cases, to killing out of necessity," Reid said.

"Assuming it's the same UNSUB, which we don't know for sure," Jackson said. But even as the words left her mouth she knew she was being pedantic. It fit. All the pieces fit. Except, of course, the why. Why would Daniel kill his wife and those other women? Why had the Agency covered it up if they knew of Taj's suspicions?

"How much of this did you know?" Gideon said.

She let out a frustrated sigh. "As I've explained about fourteen times today, I never suspected Daniel. I don't know why Taj did. I don't know what tipped him that direction. We weren't using a profile; we were just going by evidence. As far as I know, there was none linking Daniel to these murders."

"His wife was the first victim."

"Yes, but…" She frowned and ducked her head. "He was an excellent actor."

"He must've been, to get one over on you."

He didn't mean it as a compliment. She stared at him, mouth hanging open a little, but he rushed to fill the silence before anyone else could.

"Tell us again what exactly you did for the Company, Jack." He pinned her in place with raised brows and intense dark eyes. "Hm? No comment? Still keeping that one to yourself?"

Reid's eyes jumped between the two of them. He swallowed. "Gideon, I—"

"No, Spencer, stay out of it. Unless she told you something while Burns had you both. Otherwise, she can answer for herself."

"It's classified, Jason. You know that," she said. What the hell was wrong with him? It wasn't that she didn't want to answer—though she didn't—it was that she couldn't.

"Classified. Everything's so goddamn _classified!_ Your file, McCall's file, this case!"

"Jason," Hotch said. His voice was quiet, but they all knew it wouldn't be for long if Gideon kept after her.

"We all wanna know, Hotch. Don't pretend like you don't." He turned on Jackson again. "How the hell did you get approved for a three-year leave of absence from the CIA while you worked on a Ph.D. that has nothing to do with your job there? What had you done that they wanted to get rid of you so badly?"

"Are you accusing me of having something to do with Silar Creek? We talked about this the day I first came to you here! You said you profiled a man. You said you knew I wasn't the UNSUB." She struggled to stay calm. Pressed her hands against her thighs to keep them from balling into fists. Fists hurt too damn much anyway.

"Gideon, come on, she's five-three. She couldn't even reach most of these victims with a garrote," Morgan said. He tried to make a joke out of it, to alleviate some of the tension, but as Gideon's head swiveled his way and his mouth moved in one of those thin, sphinx-like smiles, he got the distinct impression he'd wandered into a trap.

"Couldn't she?" Gideon said with a brief tilt of his head. "Burns was almost a foot taller than she is. She managed to garrote him like a pro."

The room exploded. Reid surged to his feet, protesting that that had been his idea, and she'd been running on adrenaline and fear. Prentiss was asking Morgan who the hell Burns was. JJ grabbed Reid's sweater to keep him from physically leaping the table in his outrage. Hotch, as usual, tried to calm everyone down.

Through the chaos Gideon and Jackson watched each other across the table, two still forms in a wild sea. Neither spoke. Neither moved. They might as well have been alone.

"Enough!" Hotch said. He slammed both hands on the table and everyone jumped. "That is enough! Jason, you can't seriously believe that Elliot is the Silar Creek UNSUB. Even removing the physical requirements we profiled, she doesn't match the rest of it. And we know her. We know she's not a killer. You know that. What the hell is wrong with you? Daniel Talbot fits the profile. He has the physicality necessary to pull off the first set of murders, and the law enforcement know-how to take the forensic countermeasures we're seeing."

Normally he would save such a dressing-down for the privacy of his office, but he thought the rest of the team needed to hear it. Gideon's implied accusation had gone off like a hand grenade. They needed to know he was behind Jackson, even if Gideon wasn't.

Gideon spread his hands in a regretful little shrug. "I don't know, Hotch. I guess I'm just tired of all the secrets. Some of it is classified, sure, but some of it just doesn't make sense. How can you work so closely with someone and not know they're a murderer?"

Jackson pushed her chair back from the table and slowly. Deliberately. Stood. She looked around the room, gathering everyone's eyes to her, before meeting Gideon's questioning stare with a glare of her own.

"They granted me leave because it was either that or lose me," she said. "After Silar Creek I was sent back to the field. My old job, but…more. The aftermath of…incidents." She shifted her weight. How much could she say without violating orders? She'd already said too much.

"Before, I'd been more removed," she continued. "I'd come in weeks later. Work with witnesses. Satellite crime scenes, not the actual scene itself. For some reason after the Silar Creek case things changed. I was front line first response after…."

"You don't have to tell us this, EJ," Hotch said.

"Yes I do. At least some of it. Jason's right: there are too many questions. Hell, there are things I don't even understand about all of it. Especially when it comes to Daniel."

She took a deep breath and flexed her hands. The sting of pain felt good, helped ground her, and she was able to go on. "My team was sent in after a suicide bombing. Hundreds dead. Most of the bodies hadn't even been cleared away yet."

She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. Morgan reached for her, but she stopped him with a quick gesture. When she opened them again, tears brightened the green. "It's funny, because…most people aren't afraid of dying. When the moment comes. It's like they know…whatever happens next, at least it'll be over. There'll be some sort of peace.

"What they're afraid of is the pain. Will it hurt? How long will the pain last? And they're afraid for their children. Their husbands or wives." She paused. "The people they love. Those are the two thoughts most people have in that instant before they die: will it hurt, and what about…whoever."

"Jack…" Reid murmured. He cast Hotch a worried glance, but he pressed his hand against the air, as though physically trying to lower the tension in the room.

"Let her finish," he said.

"It was everywhere," she said as though the exchange hadn't happened. "Bodies and blood and body parts and all that fear. Hundreds of voices screaming all at once, hundreds of people—children, babies, old people…mothers…the mothers were the worst. Couldn't protect their children, died trying to protect them, died helpless and terrified and—"

She broke off and dragged in a shuddering breath.

"Yes," she said. "It hurts."

They all knew PTSD when they saw it, and every line of Jackson's body spoke more eloquently than any words of the trauma of it. She held herself rigid, but her face was blank, her eyes far away. The famous thousand-yard stare.

"What happened?" Gideon said when she went quiet.

A little shake and she was back. She shrugged and her mouth quirked in a rueful moue. "I couldn't do it. I nearly had a breakdown right there in that square. They had to drug me, which was fucking stupid because that made it worse until they finally gave me enough to knock me out. I'm small, but my system handles knockout drugs differently than most people's. I guess none of them read that part of my file." She dismissed it with a flick of her fingers, the normally graceful gesture made awkward by their stiffness. "Anyway, I was shipped back to Langley. They tried to put me on interrogation instead, but I refused. So I was given a choice: leave of absence, or leave altogether. Go civ."

JJ frowned. "Why didn't you do that?"

"I wanted to. Any other life that's the choice I would've taken."

"It wasn't a choice at all," Gideon said. "If she'd tried to quit they either wouldn't have let her, or they would have made it impossible for her to work again."

"Any government or law enforcement job, you mean?" Morgan said.

"Anywhere," Jackson said. "I would've been lucky to get a job flipping burgers. You think it's hard to get employment with a military Dishonorable Discharge on your record; what they would've done to me would've made that look like a parking ticket."

"Jesus," Morgan said.

"Mmm," she agreed. "So I took door number one. I took the leave. I went back to school. I did anything and everything to move on with my life, but I knew they'd call me back eventually. And they did."

"On the mole case," Hotch said. He at least knew that much.

"That's right. I don't know why me; I guess maybe they felt digging out a mole was an easy transition back to Company life."

"But you refused to do it," Hotch said. "So they called us instead."

"Yes. I knew about your unit, of course. Everyone does. But it wasn't until I watched you work that I realized…maybe that was an option for me. I could still use my ability—something the Agency was desperate for, because they were afraid it might atrophy or something—but it would be for…I don't know. Not better reasons, exactly. Terrorists are definitely bad guys. Just…different ones." She sighed. "Maybe part of it was I wanted a team again. An actual team, not that goon squad they sent with me to—the site."

A small silence fell.

Then, "Okay, I'm sorry, I get this is a team issue, but what the _hell_ are we even talking about here?!" Prentiss said. She'd had enough of trying to follow this opaque conversation. She knew it connected back to Taj somehow, his days in the CIA, and she was as sick of being in the dark as Gideon had been—and she was in the even darker.

Hotch rubbed a hand across his mouth and down. He cast Jackson a questioning look, and she waved a hand. _You tell her_ , that wave said. _I'm all worn out of spilling secrets_.

"Jackson was part of a special unit within the CIA," Hotch said. He spoke slowly, weighed each word carefully. "Your partner was part of that unit as well. They didn't work together directly at the time—"

"I know all of that, Agent Hotchner," Prentiss bit out. "I'm asking for clarification about this conversation."

"I'm getting to it," he said. "The unit combined agents with certain special abilities—IQs like Reid's, for example."

"One eighty-seven," Reid said, helpfully.

"Right. Or, other things. Like Dr. Jackson. With regular, normal agents, like Peter McCall or Daniel Talbot."

"Other things?" Prentiss' gaze swept the room, but none of them would meet her eyes. Except Jackson.

"I know this will be hard for you to believe—it was for me as well—but Dr. Jackson has certain extra-sensory abilities. One of them is getting certain information from a crime scene. Another is…well, as she implied, gleaning information from people."

"What, enhanced interrogation?" Prentiss said with a scoff. "Like torture?"

"No!" Jackson said. "God no! I can't do anything that would hurt anyone!" Her eyes met Reid's, hers begging him to stay quiet about what he'd learned while they'd been in that cell. He pressed his lips together and said nothing. "That's not something I would do," she finally said.

"Okay, so, I don't understand. You're gonna have to spell it out for me."

"Dr. Jackson can read minds," Gideon said. "There, spelled out. We don't have time to hold your hand through this, Detective Prentiss. Yes, it's unbelievable. It's still true. Now can we please get back to the case?"

Prentiss' mouth fell open, and she sent an are you actually buying this? look around the room. Morgan shrugged. Reid's mouth quirked in a little smile. JJ's head tilted in wry acknowledgement. Hotch just glowered.

She sat back in her chair, astounded. "So this is for real. You all believe this bizarre little fairy tale. Or else this is a wild, elaborate prank that's gone way too far."

"Detective Prentiss." Hotch let out an impatient breath. "We could have Dr. Jackson demonstrate her ability for you, but as Jason said, we need to get back to the case. Also." His eyes flicked to Jackson and back again. "I'm not sure she's in the mood for guessing games right now. You said your partner trusted her, and you trust your partner. Now's when you decide just how far that trust goes."

"I do trust Taj, but…"

"It's always tricky trusting a spook," Jackson said.

Prentiss was on her feet in an instant. "What did you say?!"

"You heard me. And you know why I said it." She sounded utterly weary. "Believe it or don't, Detective. As long as it doesn't affect how you work Taj's murder, I don't care." She glanced at Hotch. "I'll be in your office, sir. Again. We can finish this conversation there."

No one spoke as she rounded the table and left the room, but they all took note of her dragging steps and slumped shoulders. They'd never seen her looking so worn out and defeated, even immediately after the ordeal with Burns.

The door closed behind her and Morgan turned burning eyes on Gideon. "You have got some goddamn nerve—"

"Morgan, that's enough."

"Hotch, man—"

"I know what you're going to say, and you're right. But now isn't the time. I want everyone to go home. We'll reconvene at seven AM on Monday morning, at the plane. Try to get some rest until then. This is a rough case, and it hits close to home. Coming right on the heels of St. Augustine, it's a lot to deal with. If any of you want to sit this one out, I understand. Just let me know before Monday morning. Detective Prentiss, you're welcome to come with us, but, again, it's your decision. That's all. Dismissed."

Protests all around, but Hotch lifted a hand and they fell silent. "My orders were clear," he said. "And I don't think it needs to be said, but I will anyway: anything you just learned in this room is classified. It doesn't leave these walls. Understood?"

At their mumbles of assent he nodded. "Good. Now. Dismissed. Wheels up Monday morning."

* * *

Reid kept finding excuses to linger at his desk after the others were gone. Jack, Gideon, and Hotch were still in Hotch's office. It looked tense for a while, but finally things seemed to calm down. He thought maybe from Gideon's body language he was apologizing, but he couldn't be sure. Jack looked as exhausted as he'd ever seen her, and he hoped Gideon remembered this time last week she'd been in the hospital.

The door opened and he quickly turned his attention elsewhere. Jackson's desk was across from his, and he pretended to be startled when she appeared at it.

"Oh, hey, didn't realize you were still here," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "Spencer, please."

"Yeah, okay. I was waiting for you. I wanted to make sure you're okay after—all that."

She didn't say anything, just ducked her head and concentrated on packing her briefcase. Finally she looked up to meet his worried eyes. "Do you think I could crash at your place tonight? I know it's a weird question, but—well. Hotch is worried I might be a target because of my connection to Taj, and last time I was home…"

"You were with him," he said when she didn't finish.

"Yeah."

He swallowed. Dropped his gaze to the papers on the desk and scratched his forehead. "Yeah, sure, that's cool. I'll take the couch."

"Oh, you don't have to do that."

"I don't mind," he said. He shoved a few papers into his messenger bag and stood. Slid his hands into his pockets. "Are you ready now?"

She cast around her desk a moment, but after straightening a few things she nodded. "I think I've got all I need."

They headed toward the elevator. It was quiet; nearly everyone had gone home already.

"Ohh…crap," he said, apropos of nothing.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Umm…I just remembered…" His place was a total wreck. He hadn't done the dishes in a while, and his laundry pile was out of control. He rubbed the back of his neck and squirmed with discomfort. "My place—isn't exactly—fit for company right now."

"Oh," she said and relaxed. "Is that all?"

"Maybe I'm understating it a little."

"Spencer. Don't worry about it." She elevator binged and she stepped in. He stood in place, awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot.

"I've been, you know…distracted," he said.

"I know. Are you coming or not?"

"I haven't even changed my sheets in—a while." He didn't want to tell her how long. He wasn't sure, but definitely before Hankel.

She let out an impatient sigh. "I told Garcia earlier that I was going to ask you about crashing at your place. She went over there after work and got it straightened up. Don't worry about it."

"Wait—what? Garcia? Cleaned my apartment?" He jumped onto the elevator just before the doors closed. "When were you going to mention this?"

"I guess when we got there and it was clean. She went by my place and got me a change of clothes, too. And probably cleaned up there while she was at it. That woman loves to clean."

"But—shouldn't she have asked me first?"

She reached past him to hit the button for the lobby. "What would you have said?"

His face screwed up in consternation. "I don't know. That isn't really the point."

"The way she made it sound…it seemed like it would be okay with you. Like it's something she's done before. She said she checks on Morgan's dog all the time, too. Waters JJ's plants."

His mouth fell open. Something she'd done before? "That…explains a lot, actually," he said. The doors opened and they stepped off into the lobby. "Sometimes it seemed like things had been rearranged, just a little, but I could never put my finger on it."

She eyed him. "You thought you had gremlins?"

He shrugged. "Or gnomes, maybe."

"Hmm. Which are more helpful?"

"Gnomes, I think. They make shoes."

"No, that's elves."

"Oh, right. So what do gnomes do?"

"I don't know, besides wear pointy hats." They were outside by this time, and she stopped him with a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Spencer. I should have asked first. Or she should have. I really thought it was a thing she did, like her way of helping you guys out while you were on the road."

He shook his head. "No, it's fine, it's just…it's just strange. Why hasn't she been by since—?"

She lifted a brow. "Maybe because she was afraid you'd bite her head off," she said, gently.

He wanted to protest, but after a moment he gave a rueful nod. "Yeah, I guess that's fair." Hands back in his pockets, he started walking again.

"I'm sure she didn't snoop," she said.

"Garcia?" He laughed. "Are we talking about the same Garcia?"

"Okay, good point." Now it was her turn to look nervous. "How much snooping do you think she does?"

"Well…not too much. I have an eidetic memory and I only barely noticed something was different. She either put things back exactly where she found them, or her snooping was minimally invasive."

"Maybe at your place, because she knows you'd notice."

"You'd notice too." He glanced at her. "You notice things. Not just because you're a profiler, but because you just do."

"CIA training, I guess." They walked together in silence for a time, until they reached the parking garage. "You know," she said, "I think I figured out what gnomes do."

"Oh? What's that?"

She made an expansive gesture toward his car. "That," she said.

His face scrunched. "You're funny."

"I know."

"Really, a laugh riot. Original, too. Morgan's never teased me about my car."

She grinned and nudged him with her shoulder. "I bet Garcia hasn't either."

"Actually, no she hasn't. And she's a car person."

"Ah, well. May we all strive to be as good-hearted as Penelope Garcia."

"You know she's probably snooping around your apartment right now."

"Hush, Spencer. You're ruining the moment."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chapter so far, but I wanted to go ahead and get us through to Monday and Silar Creek without breaking things up


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team arrives in Silar Creek, and shit gets real.

**Silar Creek, MD**  
 **Monday**  
She had hoped never to return here. It wasn't just the typical high school scars so many kids carried with them; it was…everything else. Her high school years had been no better or worse than anyone else's, she supposed, especially once she came to Silar Creek and was among kids more like she was.

The scars she carried, the ones that bore Silar Creek's brand, were from later years. She couldn't forget the haunted look that had grown in Taj's eyes as the case had weighed heavier on him; now she knew part of the weight he carried had to do with his suspicions about Talbot. He hadn't wanted to tell her that her partner, the first victim's husband, was the best looking lead they had.

She knew why he had cut her out. She had let him, even. But still it bothered her. She had wanted this case put down as much as he had—

"None of this is your fault, Jack," Reid's familiar voice interrupted her spiraling thoughts as she stared out the SUV's window.

She turned her head slowly to meet his concerned hazel eyes. "Then why does it feel like it is?"

He shrugged. "Misdirected guilt—"

"Don't, boy genius," she said. "I know you mean well, but don't. Any guilt I feel is directed exactly where it belongs. If I'd done my job back then we might not have to be here now; Taj might not be dead. It's as simple as that." Her voice was gentle, but there was a core of steel to her tone that brooked no argument.

"No blame, remember?" he said. He retreated and left her to brood.

They pulled up in front of the small clapboard sheriff's office, and the sound of large car doors slamming echoed through the peaceful morning. A heavyset man in his mid-fifties hurried down the low steps to meet them, but he bypassed Hotch (every local cop's first stop) and went straight to Jackson. "Agent Jackson, good to see you again. I see you brought the cavalry this time."

Her smile was weak, but her grip was strong as she returned his handshake. "You too, Sheriff Monroe. I guess you heard I'm no longer with the Agency?"

He nodded; the early sun caught the white hair tufting around his head and lit it like a corona. "You know we like to make nice with those Agency boys; we got no choice, really, what with the school and all, but I'm glad they've handed the investigation over…but why after all this time? I was a might confused by Agent Jareau's request, but I wasn't gonna say no. I want those murders off my books bad as anyone."

"That's why we're here. How much did Agent Jareau tell you on the phone?"

His lined face went still. "She said about Taj. That's a damn shame, Jack; he was a good man and a good cop. I know he worked that case the best he could."  
For some reason these simple words from a seasoned, small-town lawman like Tom Monroe made her throat thick and her eyes sting. She swallowed hard; fought not to show how much he'd touched her. "Thank you, Sheriff; I know it would mean a lot to him that you thought so."

He gave her shoulder a brief squeeze, showing he understood, cop to cop. They stood like that for a quiet moment before he cleared his throat and indicating the rest of the team. "Introduce me and let's get started. I know it's a cold case, but us standin' out here chewin' the fat's not warmin' it up any."

* * *

"Did Taj ever come to you with a real suspect? I mean, more than just tossing out names, but a real, viable possibility?" Jackson asked him once they were all settled in the room he'd had set aside for them. Coffee was poured, and a crime board was set up nearby. Reid was busy filling in the scant details they'd scraped together since the original Silar Creek files had been last updated.

Sheriff Monroe looked suddenly wary. "Now, Ellie, listen—"

"Sheriff, please, I'm not in high school anymore. Didn't we get over this issue last time I was here in an official capacity?" she reminded him with a slight lift of her brows.

He sighed heavily. "I'm sorry; sometimes it's hard to separate the girl I knew back then and the cop now. Okay, listen. From pretty early on I suspected Andrea's husband, Daniel. I knew he was your partner, and when you were brought in on the investigation, I was surprised. Taj and I were on the same page about him, and he asked me to keep my thoughts from you."

She sat back in her chair and exchanged glances with the rest of the team. "But you never suspected him, Jack?" Gideon said.

"I must be the only one," she said in a voice dripping self-recrimination.

Monroe shifted; huffed out a breath. "That wasn't exactly your fault, I think."

Hotch pinned him with a classic Hotch glare. "What do you mean, Sheriff?"

"Taj was instructed to keep large parts of the investigation from you—evidence reports, autopsy results, witness interviews—basically anything he could get away with. I know it didn't make him happy, but—"

"He was just following orders," she said as her head sank into her hands.

"Why would he do something like that?" Prentiss said. "Orders or not…he was a good cop. How were you supposed to solve the case if he was withholding information?"

Monroe fixed her with a long, steady stare, then his eyes, gone from twinkling, Santa Claus-like brightness to cold steel, darted to Jackson. "I think they wanted to see if he could. But," he continued, holding up a hand to forestall her explosion, "they also didn't want you pursuing Talbot. I don't know why, but once we got too close, the investigation was shut down and Talbot was transferred. That much you know."

She felt sick. "This is ridiculous."

"I'm just telling you what I know, Jack," he said.

"You really didn't know any of this, did you?" Gideon said.

"I told you" was her weary, sad reply. "Was it all just a game, Sheriff? Four women died so that the CIA could see if the wool could be pulled over a special's eyes? Maybe I just really suck at my job—both of my jobs."

"Don't give yourself so much credit," Monroe said. "None of this was about you, not really. If Talbot killed Andrea, it wasn't part of anyone's plan. If the Agency knew he was the one killing the other women, and they allowed it to happen, they had their reasons, and those reasons had nothing to do with you. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—or the right place at the right time, depending on point of view—and you fit in the way you fit in."

Jackson blinked at Monroe in astonishment, and Hotch decided it was time to step in. "We'll need the information McCall was instructed to hold back. I assume you have it? And since you seem so sure Talbot's your man, does it all point to him?"

"I have it, but a lot of it's inconclusive. The Slayer took a lot of countermeasures. It's what made us suspect a cop in the first place."

"Good. Get it. We'll also want to begin interviewing witnesses—I know it's been a few years, and some of them will have graduated and moved on, but we'll need to speak to whomever we can. We'll want to visit old scenes, as well, starting with the first one."

Monroe sighed and rose to his feet like a tired old man. "I keep the files in my cabin outside of town. They're safe there, locked up. I'll run out and get them now. Should I go alone, or do you want to send someone with me?"

Hotch contemplated briefly. "Morgan, go along. Gideon, you're with me at the first scene. Prentiss, JJ, go to the school. Reid, EJ, stay here and start calling any witnesses who have moved. We're back here in two hours unless I hear from you otherwise."

They scattered, but Hotch caught Jackson's eye before she could escape. "Keep breathing, EJ," he told her. "We need you on this."

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

* * *

"You really think Daniel Talbot's our man?" Morgan said to Monroe. They were in one of the Bureau-issue SUVs on the way to Monroe's cabin; it was about fifteen minutes outside of town, the Sheriff had said, and they were almost there. Morgan's hands were tight on the wheel as he navigated the twisting, turning roads in the failing daylight.

Monroe was silent for so long that Morgan glanced over to make sure he was still awake. "It was a bad thing, this case," he said at last. "From the minute we got the call about Andrea, I knew nothin' in the Creek was gonna be the same again. There aren't many murders here; it's a pretty quiet place." His sigh was heavy, and it filled the air with melancholy. "I hate it for Jack. She trusted Talbot and Taj, and she's not the type to trust easily."

Morgan gave a slow nod; he knew that much from personal experience. "Would Taj have had any reason other than orders for withholding this evidence from her?"

"He knew it would hurt her, but he also knew she's a professional. Taj was a joker, and sometimes a wiseass, but he was loyal. If the Agency told him to do something, he did it…even if he didn't like it. It's just up here on the left."

Morgan turned down a long gravel drive; the big SUV handled the rutted road with ease, but the constant jostling made Morgan's teeth hurt. "You get out here much? Road's a mess."

"Not as much as I'd like. Used to, but now…some of the fun's gone. I think that happens when you keep secrets. Pull up here." Monroe climbed out almost as soon as Morgan pulled to a stop, but the FBI man hesitated.

He took his time getting out of the SUV; checked his sidearm; stood at the door and slipped his jacket on before slamming the panel closed and following Monroe. It was almost full dark, and night sounds filled the air. Morgan slapped at a mosquito in irritation.

"Safe's just inside," Monroe said over his shoulder. "Won't take but a sec. You can wait in the truck if you want."

"I'll wait on the porch," Morgan said. He could easily see into the cabin's interior, but he also had a view of the surrounding woods. Something was making him nervous, jumpy; it was like a physical sensation, a prickling itch between his shoulder blades. He shrugged restless shoulders and climbed the creaking steps to the wooden porch.

Probably just a city boy in the woods. He'd never liked them, and the rapidly-deepening darkness only made it worse. He wished he'd left the car running and the headlights on.

Behind him, Monroe unlocked the door and stepped inside. He took two steps, toward the living room, and something—he wasn't sure what, some ingrained cop instinct—raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Not wasting any more time, he screamed without turning, "Morgan, RUN!"

Morgan hesitated only a second as Monroe's desperate cry registered; the words took a moment to find any meaning. Then his body was moving before his mind fully understood, and he leapt from the porch like the athlete he'd always been. He ran, and he ran hard, but he'd barely made it twenty feet before the shockwave hit. There was a boom (though such a small word seemed laughably inadequate), and Morgan was flying again.

This time he came to rest with a bone-jarring bounce and a decisive thud. Blood leaked from his ears and his nose, and now the only sound that echoed in the silent forest was the mocking crackle of flames as the remains of Tom Monroe's cabin burned to the ground.

* * *

Jackson hung up the phone and rubbed the back of her neck with a long sigh.

"Anything?" she said to Reid. They had been calling witnesses for what seemed like hours, and she was already bored out of her wits. She understood why Hotch didn't want her in the field, but that didn't mean she had to like it.

He shook his head, disordered curls flying. "Coming up empty. When people leave this town, they mean it."

She offered a grim smile. "I meant it. But sometimes fate has other plans."

"You believe in that sort of thing? Fate? Predestination?"

She wondered if he were making fun of her, but a quick check of his earnest expression told her his curiosity was genuine. "I don't know. I'd like to say no, of course not, but a part of me…" She trailed off with a shrug. "I feel like my life for the last several years as all been leading me right back here. I left Silar Creek with unfinished business, and I won't be able to keep going until it's all settled."

"I think Gideon feels the same way."

"Yes. I hope we can both find the closure we need this time around."

"You know he—he doesn't mean it."

"Mean what, boy genius? To constantly question my loyalty? To treat me like some sort of traitor? Or an idiot?" She broke off and rubbed the bandage-free hand over her mouth. "I told you he apologized in Hotch's office the other night, and I think he meant it, but…still he's hounding me. What the hell do I have to do?"

Reid opened his mouth to reply, but his phone interrupted him. "It's JJ," he said. He hit the button to answer. "JJ, it's Reid. You're on speaker."

"Spencer, it's Jennifer," she said.

Reid and Jackson exchanged looks, and Reid's scrunched, concerned face spoke volumes.

"Spencer, Detective Prentiss and I are at the school. Is Agent Jackson there with you?"

"I'm here, JJ," she said.

"Great. Listen, I need you to come down here. There are some records we need you to take a look at, get your take on some things. How soon can you be here?"

"Um." She blinked. "Ten minutes?"

"Ten minutes is perfect. We don't need you here, Spencer. Just send Agent Jackson."

"Sure, JJ, no problem," Reid said.

JJ hung up before anyone could say anything else, and the two agents stared at the phone with identical frowns of puzzlement and displeasure. "What the fuck was that?" Jackson said.

"She called me _Spencer._ She never calls me Spencer."

"And she called herself _Jennifer."_ Jackson drummed her fingertips against the table. "And _Agent Jackson_? This is bad. Like rotten eggs bad. Like…down to our last out and down by ten bad."

He didn't get the reference, but he thought it had something to do with sports. And clearly it wasn't good. "So what do we do?"

_"We_ aren't doing anything," she said with a lift of her brows. _"You_ are going to call Hotch, and _I_ am going to the school."

"You're not going alone."

"I won't be alone. You're calling Hotch, remember?" She reached out and grabbed his hand firmly in her own. "Listen to me, Spencer Reid. I don't want you anywhere near that school. You're still shaky, and you've just returned from one damn kidnapping; I'm not letting you walk into another. You're going to stay here, and Hotch and Gideon and however many Silar Creek deputies are going to follow me as backup. Understand?"

"You were kidnapped, too," he said, though there wasn't much conviction in it.

She squeezed his fingers. "I know. But it's me he wants, and I have little doubt that he'd kill JJ and Prentiss if we showed up together."

"Neither of us have been cleared for field duty."

She frowned. "What are my options? Leave JJ and Prentiss in danger?"

"Let Hotch handle it. It's his job."

"It's our job, too. And—me letting someone else handle it is what put us here in the first place. If I'd pushed Taj, or—" She took a long breath and untangled her fingers from his. "I have to fix this, Reid. You know that."

He was silent, his eyes intent on her face as he studied her. Finally, "Do you think Prentiss is dead?"

"I really, really hope not," she said.

"Me too."

She flashed him a quick, rueful grin. "Once more unto the breach, I guess."

He smiled weakly. "Not funny."

"But appropriate. Call Hotch," she said. "Tell him to hurry, and to be subtle."

"Fine. But be careful, Jack. I mean it. No stupid risks."

"Who, me? You've got me confused with some other mind-reading former spook." She patted her weapon in its holster, tossed her blazer back on, and left him there to worry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter today, loves. I wanted to end it a bit cliff-hangery, and that's how it fell out. 3 more for this one, methinks.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jackson accepts the UNSUB's invitation and heads to the school. Hotch is displeased.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who've seen my picspam on tumblr, you will now understand what all the pictures mean. For those of you who haven't seen it, come find my fic blog at juiceinpanties. It's not nearly as dirty as it sounds, I promise.

**robber men await you then in each beguiling alley**  
**to shake you and to pierce you and remind you of**  
**my dark life**  
Elvis Costello, "My Dark Life"

"Strange no one's moved into the house after all this time," Gideon said as the agents let themselves into Daniel and Andrea Talbot's old home.

"There's not much crime in this town; a murder is big news, and enough to scare people off," Hotch said.

They moved from room to room like ghosts, the perfect silence marred only by soft footfalls and the susurrus hiss of pages turning as they flipped through crime scene photos. After several minutes, Gideon shook his head. "There's nothing left here," he said. "And there was precious little to begin with."

"Did you really intend to transfer Jackson back to the Agency without speaking to me first?" Hotch said, apropos of nothing, his voice deceptively mild, as he compared a photo of the Talbots' bedroom to the empty room they stood in.

Gideon frowned. Knelt to examine a scuff on the baseboard before pushing upright again. "I probably wouldn't have done it."

"But you threatened her with it."

"This team is important to her. What other leverage did I have? I knew she wasn't being straight with us about this case."

Hotch slid the photo back into the file and fixed his mentor with a long, measured look. "Jason, I know you've been away from this for a while, but you need to understand something. We're a team here, and if we have a problem with another team member, we deal with it openly and directly. We don't threaten. We don't look for leverage. Is that clear?"

Gideon had the grace to look…if not embarrassed, then at least discomfited. "I realize now that my suspicions were largely misplaced. And I have apologized to her."

"That isn't the point."

He hesitated. Then, "No, I guess it isn't. I—" He broke off abruptly, and his expression turned sharp, like a hunter catching a scent.

"What?" Hotch said, following his gaze to the corner of the room.

"That flower is fresh."

Hotch opened his mouth; closed it again. "I'm sure friends, former students, townspeople, leave tokens in Andrea's memory."

"Outside. There was a small shrine outside. Who would come in, all the way into the bedroom, to leave a flower?"

Their eyes met. "He's in town," Gideon said. "Daniel Talbot is in Silar Creek right now, and he knows we are, too."

Hotch's possible reply was cut off as his phone rang. He didn't drop Gideon's suddenly grim gaze as he reached to answer it. "Reid, what is it?" He tilted his head toward the front door and they rushed that way.

"Hang on, slow down, say it all again."

By the time he managed to make sense of Reid's panicked babbling, they were in the car. "What do you mean you let her go?" he barked into the phone.

"I tried to stop her. What was I supposed to do; tie her down?"

"You do have handcuffs, Reid."

"I recently watched her strangle a man with my tie while he was slamming her against a wall and breaking her ribs. I don't think I could take her."

Hotch ground his teeth, but at last he relented. "I'm sure you did what you could. How much of a head start does she have on us?"

"Twenty seconds, maybe fewer."

"And we're closer to the school. Good. Get on the line with Garcia and ask her to get you blueprints and ground plans. Listen, Reid: the first set she comes across probably won't be complete. Tell her to do whatever she has to do to get me a complete and accurate set of plans to that school. Do you understand?"

Hotch could hear Reid swallow through the phone. "Yes, sir. Anything else?"

"She was right to make you stay there. You're not ready for field work."

"And she is?!"

"I don't know. Let's hope so."

A brief sigh through the phone. "I know. I'll call you as soon as I have something."

"Good. I'm calling Morgan now." He hit end and let out a sharp breath. "There's a hostage situation at the school," he said.

"Students?"

"I don't know. But JJ and Prentiss are there." He hit Morgan's speed dial key and raised the phone to his ear. Gideon watched as his face went even darker, and then thunderous as Morgan's voicemail picked up. "Let me try Monroe," he said.

"The signal around here is shaky," Gideon said with little conviction.

There was no answer there, either; his went straight to voicemail without ringing. Hotch rubbed his temples with a weary hand. He dialed Garcia, and he was almost irrationally relieved when she answered immediately.

"Captain my captain, I just talked to our young genius. I'm working on the blueprints right now. Any word about the lovely ladies?"

"Garcia, I need you to do something for me. Morgan isn't answering his cell; can you track it?"

There was a tiny pause, like a hiccup, before she said, "Of course. Give me two shakes." He could hear the sound of typing. "I've got a signal a few miles west of Silar Creek."

"Try Sheriff Monroe's," he said, feeding her the number.

More key taps. "Nothing. Either he's in a dead zone or his phone is off."

"Thanks, Garcia. Get back to the blueprints."

"Sir! You don't think Morgan…?" The fear in her voice was palpable.

"I don't know. I'm calling dispatch right now."

"What can I do?"

"Get me those building plans. Okay, Garcia? They're crucial."

"Yes, sir. I'm on it."

"I know you are, Garcia, and I know that means it's as good as done. I'll keep you posted." He rang off and turned to Gideon with a somber expression. "She has a signal from Morgan's phone somewhere out in the woods; nothing from Monroe's."

"Sounds like they made it to the cabin. We should head to the school; we have to make sure Talbot doesn't see us, or any hostages are dead."

Hotch nodded and started the car. He made another phone call on the way; rattled off his name, rank, and badge number to the Silar Creek dispatcher. "I need all units at Silar Creek Academy immediately. Instruct them to come in quiet; absolutely no lights or sirens. Tell them to look for our vehicle; that's the gathering point."

"Yes, sir. Have you contacted Sheriff Monroe?"

"My Agent and your Sheriff are incommunicado. Send a deputy to the Sheriff's cabin; I don't have an address, but my tech can get you GPS coordinates."

"Not necessary, Agent Hotchner. Everyone in town knows Sheriff Monroe's cabin. Actually…hold a moment, sir." She was only gone for a few seconds. "Agent Hotchner? We had a 911 call of a possible fire in that area. We have units and fire department responding."

Hotch blinked. "Thank you," he said for lack of any other response. "Send anyone left to the school, and don't forget my orders. We have a possible hostage situation, and if the taker gets wind of police involvement, he will not hesitate to kill the hostages."

"Yes, sir. I understand, sir. We won't let you down."

"I'm sure you won't," he said. He ended the call and drummed frustrated fingers against the steering wheel. "There's a fire out near Monroe's cabin," he finally told Gideon.

The older agent stared out the window. Pensive lines scored his face. "It seems like Talbot is tying up loose ends."

"He won't let EJ out of that school alive, Jason."

"No," Gideon agreed, "and things don't look good for JJ and Prentiss, either."

* * *

Jackson knew every inch of the Silar Creek Academy campus as well as she knew her own apartment in Arlington. She had spent most of her high school years exploring the expansive grounds, looking for places to find a bit of breathing room. All that alone time was paying off now as she approached the high fence at a dark, isolated spot.

The fence was generally electrified, but she noticed a squirrel skipping along the top. Interesting. She could only guess that Daniel had cut the power, knowing she wouldn't want to stroll through the front door. Or maybe the CIA had become less paranoid over the last few years—but she somehow doubted that.

So now to go over, or under. Hopefully students today still used the—yep, there it was. A loose section of fencing. Innocuous looking branches littered the ground on either side of the fence. Perfect for pushing an electrified bit of metal out of your way. Of course it was still absurdly dangerous, but kids had been doing stupid, dangerous things since the dawn of time.

"No stupid risks," she whispered. She grabbed one of the branches and shoved it against the fence. Nothing. Above her head a crow landed on the chain link and cawed at her.

Clearly the power had been cut.

Jackson dropped to her knees and crawled through the small hole. The fence clawed at her jacket, and she heard a ripping sound as she cleared it. She cursed under her breath. She _liked_ this jacket, dammit! Should've left it back at the station.

She stripped it off and dropped it in front of the fence. A line of shrubbery now separated her from campus proper, but there were ways through it as well. She would be coming in blind, though, and she had to hope that Talbot hadn't set some sort of trap for her. Surely he wouldn't know where she was coming through.

She knelt in front of the makeshift tunnel and tried to make out anything on the other side. It was too dark, and she didn't dare use her light. He wanted her inside. He wanted a face-to-face confrontation. He wouldn't booby trap the damn bushes and risk taking her out on the way in.

 _Trust the profile_ , she heard Hotch say in her head.

"Okay," she breathed. "Okay, I hear you." She crawled through the tunnel and stayed low as she emerged from the other side. As soon as she was clear of the bushes' prickly grasp she pulled her weapon. Nearly fumbled it. Another quiet curse and she used her teeth to rip the bandages off her hand.

It hurt like a son of a bitch, but she gripped the gun well enough despite that.

At her hip her phone vibrated. She nearly threw it back through the tunnel, but a check of the caller ID made her pause.

"Daniel," she said.

"Elliot. It's been a while, hasn't it?" He sounded polite, cordial even. But something in his voice made her pulse kick up a notch.

"Yep. Almost four years now." She scanned the expanse of grass that unrolled between her and the main building, but there was nothing. No movement. No light.

"I'm guessing you're on campus by now. You got Agent Jareau's message?"

"Loud and clear," she said.

"Good. You'll find us in the third subbasement in the main building." He paused. "Didn't know there was a third subbasement, did you?"

She let out a huff of breath. "I'm learning that there was a lot I didn't know about this place. Or the people in it."

"Smart girl. Head to the main building, then take the service elevator to the basement. You'll find the stairs to the subbasement behind the boilers. You know where that is, I'm sure."

Everyone knew where the boilers were; it was _the_ place on campus to go make out when you thought you were being sneaky or rebellious.

It's hardly a rebellion when everyone does it, and the entire staff knows about it.

"Have you hurt JJ or Prentiss?" she said. She kept as low as she could and hustled across the lawn. There was no cover. She felt watched.

"I've decided I'm done with killing humans. That thing with Taj—well. You know it broke my heart. But needs must. Now, I think we can talk more when you get here. See you soon."

The call disconnected. "Goddammit," she said.

She paused at the service entrance and hit the speed dial button for Hotch. He answered almost instantly.

"EJ, where are you? Stop and wait for backup. Gideon and I are on our way."

"Where's Morgan?" she said.

He hesitated. Then, "There was an explosion at Sheriff Monroe's cabin. He and Morgan aren't answering their phones. First responders are on the way now."

Her mouth hardened. The muscles in her jaw danced as she clenched her teeth. "He's in the third subbasement, I assume with JJ and Prentiss. He said he's done with killing humans."

A brief silence. "What does that mean?"

"I think you know," she said. She repeated the directions Talbot had given her. "I don't believe him. If I don't come alone, he will kill them. Just give me some time, Hotch."

"You can barely hold a gun!"

She frowned down at the gun in her hand and adjusted her shaky grip. "Good thing it's not my only weapon, huh? Give me ten. If you haven't heard from me by then, storm the Bastille."

She snapped the phone closed and threw it as far as she could across the lawn. She watched it fly and wondered if her career went with it. Hotch might not get over this one.

* * *

"She's not answering," Hotch said as he dialed her again.

"She probably turned it off, or left it behind," Gideon said. "She wouldn't want the sound from it to distract her." He paused. "She asked for ten minutes. Maybe we should give it to her. She's right: if he sees us, he'll start shooting. JJ and Prentiss didn't go in with vests. I doubt Jack did either."

"She has three broken ribs, a concussion, and one mostly-functioning hand. I hardly think she's in any position to be confronting an UNSUB as dangerous as Daniel Talbot."

Gideon scratched a graying brow. His expression was contemplative. "You asked me to trust her. I think that's what we should do."

Hotch glared out the windshield and gripped the wheel in both hands. "It's not about trust, Jason. There are two federal agents and a Metro homicide detective in that basement with an UNSUB who has no intention of leaving there alive. He has nothing left to lose."

"In the end it's your call."

A strained silence fell. They were almost to the school; he had to make a decision. She wasn't cleared for field duty. She had disobeyed his direct order by proceeding alone and going incommunicado. The UNSUB in question was someone she knew personally.

He braked the SUV to a stop, and soon they were surrounded by darkened patrol cars.

"Well?" Gideon said.

"I'll give her five," he growled.

* * *

Jackson finally gave up and pulled her light on the second set of stairs. The lights barely worked, and she didn't want to end her rescue efforts in a heap at the bottom of a flight of concrete steps. Besides, he knew she was coming.

She descended quickly but carefully. Checked all the blind corners as she went. Talbot had been right about one thing: she had no idea there was a third subbasement. Or even a first one. What the hell did they need three subbasements for? She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

The final flight of stairs dead-ended into a heavy metal door. She paused a moment and took a deep, fortifying breath before pushing it open. She spun, shining her light everywhere it could reach—but she saw nothing. Heard nothing.

There was a rumble in the distance, and abruptly lights sprang to life along the length of the cavernous subbasement. She pressed her back to the door and tried to make sense of what she saw. Hospital beds. Dozens of them. Also…bathtubs. Big, old fashioned porcelain ones that were bolted to the floor. And chairs. Wooden, with leather straps on the arms, back, and legs. Also bolted down.

What the hell was this place?

A shot rang out, breaking the silence, and she ducked behind a nearby concrete pillar. The size of the room made it impossible to tell where the shot originated; it echoed and re-echoed off the hard surfaces.

There was the crackle of a loudspeaker, then Daniel's voice. "There you are. Come on in, take a look around. I bet you're wondering what a place like this is doing underneath a school."

"Daniel, let Agent Jareau and Detective Prentiss go. I'm the one you want, and I'm here now. Can you hear me? You don't need them." She ducked low and scuttled toward one of the huge bathtubs. Inside there was a ring of dirt, but little else.

"Have you ever seen pictures of old insane asylums, Jack?"

"Daniel, can you hear me? Let—"

"I hear you!" he snarled. "Say it again and I kill them both."

"Okay, that's not—you don't need to do that." She inched toward the next tub in the line. The loudspeaker had to be in some kind of centralized location, but close enough to where he could hear her voice. He was in this room. Somewhere.

Another shot, and she heard the ping of a bullet ricocheting off of porcelain just by her face. She ducked, but not before a shard slashed across her cheek. She raised a hand to the small wound and her fingers came back bloody.

 _Add it to the goddamn list_ , she thought.

She sat with her back against the tub and tried to still her breath. She needed to be able to hear.

How long since she'd talked to Hotch? Three minutes? Four? There was no way he'd give her the ten minutes she'd asked for, but hopefully he'd recognize the logic in her request and hang back for a few.

"Put down your gun and step into the center aisle or Agent Jareau dies. You have ten seconds."

"Daniel, wait, let's talk about this."

"Nine."

She gulped in a breath. "What about insane asylums? Tell me."

"Eight."

Fuck fuck _fuck!_ Rule number one: never put down your weapon. But she had no doubt he'd follow through on his threat.

"Seven. Tell her, Agent Jareau."

"Jack, don't, I'm fine, I can—!" Her words were cut off with a muffled cry of pain.

"Now you have three seconds. Three."

"Daniel, please, we can—"

"Two! I'm not bluffing, Elliot."

"Okay!" she cried. She set her gun on the floor and slid it away. Then she rose, hands up, and walked to the center aisle. "Okay! I'm here, Daniel. I'm unarmed. Now can we talk?"

"Keep walking," he said. "You'll find us soon."


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final showdown with the UNSUB.

"That's it, we're going in," Hotch said. "Reid, have you got those plans?"

"Yes, sir," he said through the radio. "I can walk you through it. It doesn't show a subbasement on this map."

"That's fine. EJ told us where it is. Just get us to the boiler room."

Silar Creek had no SWAT division of its own, and they were too far from a major city to gather a team in time. Instead, Maryland State Police and Silar Creek deputies moved in behind Hotch and Gideon. Hotch missed the rest of his team, but he shoved his worries about Morgan and JJ aside and concentrated on following Reid's directions.

"What the hell kind of school is this?" Gideon said as they approached the front doors. The huge Gothic revival building resembled a castle, and its doors were like castle gates…complete with a portcullis, of sorts.

"Bars on the doors," Hotch said.

"And the windows," Gideon said. He shone his light at one to illustrate.

"Are they protecting the outside from the students, or the students from the outside?"

"Probably a bit of both."

"Looks like someone's inviting us in," Hotch said. The doors were propped open. "Okay, everyone, look sharp," he said into the radio. "We believe the UNSUB is in the third subbasement, but don't assume anything. Eyes open, weapons up, radio silence. Reid, which way?"

* * *

"That's far enough."

He no longer spoke through the loudspeaker, and Jackson's head whipped toward the voice. He emerged from the shadows and gave her an ironic smile.

"Good to see you, Jack."

"I could say the same, if the circumstances were different."

He held a gun in his right hand, but loosely, down at his side. He didn't consider her a threat. His hair had thinned further and his bright blue eyes were bloodshot. He had lost weight, almost to the point of emaciation.

"You look—you look good," she said.

A brief, jagged laugh. "You always were a terrible liar, Elliot. It's why I got you in on the case. I knew you wouldn't be able to lie to me about anything you found." He scowled. "I didn't expect _Taj_ to lie to _you."_

"Neither did I."

"I told you!" He wagged the gun at her. "I told you to stay away from him! Didn't I? I said he'd break your heart. I told you he wasn't serious about a goddamn thing."

Her mouth quirked. "He didn't break my heart, Daniel. I listened to you. I didn't let him get close enough for that."

"Ha! You've never listened to me a day in your life. It's why we're here now."

"I don't understand." She eased her weight from one foot to the other and tilted her body toward him. Her eyes scanned the dark places behind him, searching for JJ and Prentiss.

He sighed and slumped against a bathtub. "I wasn't gonna tell you this, but I figure now what the hell? I'm the one who got you assigned to Pakistan. Then, when you choked—which really surprised me, kid, I thought you were tougher than that—I convinced them to let you take leave until they needed you again."

"That's not—" She cleared her throat. "Daniel, that's not possible. You—you were my partner. Not my boss."

Another of those explosive laughs. "That's not how it works, sweetheart. We were always your bosses. You arrogant little shits with your blinkered this and special that! You had no fuckin' clue. You were puppets, and we held all your strings. Ask Taj! Oh wait, I forgot. How insensitive of me."

She stared at him. He had to be lying. It was a lie to throw her off, upset and distract her. "You were my partner!" she said again.

He moved closer. "That's exactly what you were supposed to think. Do you really believe the Company would let a group of dangerous freaks like you out into the world unsupervised? We had a direct line to the Director himself. You didn't _sneeze_ without us knowing what kinda tissue you used to mop your snot."

She shook her head, stunned. Blinked hard to keep tears at bay. Part of her still wanted to believe he was lying, but she knew he wasn't.

The cut on her cheek stung and the deep cut on her hand oozed where the stitches had ripped. She concentrated on the injuries. Concentrated on the physical pain to block out the hurt his words caused.

"How is that possible?" she said. "How did you keep it from us?"

"Oh, kid. We got tricks you never dreamed possible." He lifted his arms and turned a slow circle. "That's what this is. Like the old lunatic asylums. Back then they were looking for cures, but we were looking for triggers. Amp up an ability. Figure out how to block it."

She glanced around. Of course. The tubs, for so-called hydro therapy: immersing a subject in either icy cold or scalding hot water. The chairs, maybe for electric shocks, maybe for…anything that would require immobility.

"Jesus Christ," she whispered.

"This coulda been you," he said. "I kept you from that. I let you leave, go back to school, try to have a real life. They wanted you down here. They wanted to toughen you up and send you back out there, or maybe down to Gitmo. Bet you would've loved that."

She met his eyes and tried not to flinch from the fury she saw there. "You—did that for me?"

"Damn straight I did! Because I cared about you, Jack! I always did! You were one of them, but you—you were different. Not drunk with your own power. Not a fuckin' bully."

"A bully," she murmured. "Was Taj a bully? Is that why you killed him."

"Fuck no. Taj couldn't keep his nose out of my goddamn business. That was just tying up loose ends. Like Monroe's cabin. Like this. You gotta know, it's not personal. If it were up to me, you could go on bein' Junior G Girl to your heart's content. But you know too much. So." He shrugged and raised the gun. "That's just the way it is."

* * *

The stairs were a bottleneck that could get someone killed, so Hotch left most of the assault team in the boiler room. Gideon and four others accompanied him, all seasoned officers who weren't likely to get trigger-happy. They eased through the door at the bottom and paused there.

Voices came from further in, far enough that they probably hadn't heard the door. Hotch gestured for two of the deputies to take the left side, and two to take the right. He and Gideon, using the tubs and beds for cover, crept up the center.

He hoped Jackson was thinking of Lloyd Henry. He hoped she would keep Talbot talking long enough for them to make a move. Talbot was far more dangerous than Henry had ever been, but they had a personal connection. That might be enough.

"Just tell me why you killed those girls, Daniel," he heard her say.

"Fuck." The scrape of shoe against concrete floor. "Fuck, Jack, I didn't mean to. Exactly. Just when I saw Andrea with one of them—messin' around with one of them—I lost it!"

"Andrea was sleeping with one of the women you killed?"

"No! Christ, no, she wasn't a dyke! Or bi-curious, whatever the hell you call yourself."

The voices were close now. Hotch lifted a hand to stop Gideon, and pointed up. Gideon nodded. Hotch raised up just enough to take a quick glimpse.

Jackson stood about twenty feet ahead of them, facing their direction. Talbot had his back to them, and from his stance Hotch felt certain he was pointing a weapon at her.

"Okay." She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I'm just trying to understand. Andrea was having an affair—with a special? So you killed her?"

"That's right."

"And the others?"

"I kinda got on a roll, after Andrea. Realized—maybe I kinda liked it. Holdin' their lives in my hands. It was a rush."

"Like right now," she said. "How you're holding my life in your hands. And Agent Jareau's and Detective Prentiss's."

"You got it, kiddo. But like I said: it's nothin' personal."

Hotch rose from behind the bathtub, his weapon trained on the back of Talbot's head. "Daniel Talbot, drop the weapon. I'm Aaron Hotchner with the FBI."

Gideon moved around so that he was off to Talbot's right. "You're surrounded, Agent Talbot. Drop the weapon and let Dr. Jackson go."

"Dr. Jackson," he said. He grinned at her. "I guess you earned that one, huh?"

"Daniel, listen to them. If you kill me—"

"Shut the fuck up, Jack. For once in your life just _shut up_. If I kill you, what? They'll shoot me? They're gonna shoot me anyway. So I might as well take one last special out with me." He took a step closer, and she raised her hand in a warding gesture. He paused. Burst out laughing.

"Are you trying to—? What the hell, Elliot?! I told you it won't work on me!"

"One more step, Agent Talbot, and I will shoot you," Hotch said. "Put. The weapon. Down."

"No," she said to Daniel, "but it did distract you."

From their left came three gunshots, one after another in quick succession. Talbot's body twisted and jerked as each shot connected. His eyes widened. "You were—in the—chair!" he gasped.

Hotch spun toward the shooter, but the shadows hid them from view. "Drop the weapon!" he said. "FBI, show yourself!"

"It's me, Agent Hotchner! Detective Prentiss! Don't shoot!" She stepped into the light, hands raised. "Local boys unhooked us and one of them was kind enough to give me back my weapon."

Gideon kicked Talbot's gun away from him and knelt to check his pulse. "Someone call for a medic! He's breathing."

"Where's JJ?" Hotch said.

"With the locals. He roughed her up a bit. She's shaken up, but okay." She cast Jackson a look. "What happened to your face?"

"Death by bathtub. That was a risky as hell shot."

"I knew I had it. Thanks for the distraction."

"Yeah, well." She hitched a shoulder. "I got your message."

"Message?" Hotch said. "What message?"

"I'll explain later." Jackson rubbed at the drying blood on her cheek with a weary hand. "Let's go find JJ and get out of here."

"Jack!"

It was Talbot. She almost ignored him. She tried to. But after a brief internal struggle she turned and knelt next to him.

His face was pale, his eyes huge. Gideon was applying pressure to his chest, but it didn't look good. Too much blood, and help too far away. He met her eyes and shook his head. She gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.

"Daniel?"

"I kept you safe, Jack. I kept you out of this place. It coulda been—" He broke off to cough. "It coulda been so much worse for you. Who's gonna watch out for you now?"

"I don't know," she said. "I guess I'll have to watch out for myself."

He choked out a phlegmy laugh. "They'll come for you, Elliot. It's only a matter of time."

She leaned closer. Lowered her voice so that only he could hear. "Let them come," she whispered. "You came. Look how that turned out." She gave his shoulder a brief pat and straightened.

"Jack!" he cried. "Elliot! Wait!"

"Let's go," she said again. "There's nothing left for me here."

* * *

The next morning found her in Hotch's office yet again. He sat across the desk from her, his face carved in stern, angry lines. She was in trouble. She'd known she would be.

After an endless silence he pulled something from a drawer and set it on the desk between them.

It was her phone.

"One of the teams found this in the yard when they were doing a sweep. Care to explain?"

"I—threw it away," she said after a brief hesitation.

"Threw it away." He rested a hand on the blotter beside it. Tapped his finger against it. "Did you consider that your team leader might want to keep in touch with you as you entered a highly volatile and dangerous situation—alone and against direct orders?"

She swallowed but didn't look away. "I did consider that. I thought it would be a distraction. And, as you said, the situation was dangerous and highly volatile. I needed to give Talbot my full attention."

He made a low noise and slid the phone toward her. "I explained to you earlier in this case that we at the FBI have a chain of command that must be followed. Was I somehow unclear?"

"No, sir. Not at all."

"Then why exactly did you disobey my explicit instructions?"

She drew in a breath and let it out. Tensed her fingers to keep from fidgeting. "I knew if I didn't go in alone he would probably kill Agent Jareau and Detective Prentiss. He was a decorated CIA agent with years of experience in the field. He wasn't bluffing, and he wasn't playing games. I understand that what I did was dangerous, maybe even foolish, but if I hadn't done it, I fully believe that JJ and Prentiss would be dead now. And possibly others."

He studied her for a long time. She didn't squirm. Didn't blink. Her eyes were steady on his. "You didn't trust your team, Dr. Jackson."

"I'm sorry?" It wasn't what she'd expected.

"As I've explained to you, this is a team. We have each other's backs. No one goes in alone. You wait. You trust us. You're right about Talbot, but we should have worked out a plan together. What you did was dangerous and irresponsible."

She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Her brow crinkled. "To be fair, Agent Hotchner, recently my team…hasn't had my back as much as I might like."

"You could have come to us with your concerns about Reid."

"You're a profiler! You're telling me you didn't recognize his problem for what it was? You left him to deal with it on his own. You all did! Yes, I could have come to you, or to Jason, but with all due respect—I shouldn't have had to. You should have had his back. Then he would have had mine."

His mouth hardened into a thin line. She wasn't saying anything he hadn't thought of himself. He had let Reid down. They all had, except maybe Jackson herself, because even when Reid was at his worst, she'd kept trying. The rest of them had figured—

He let out a long sigh. "I forget, sometimes," he said.

Her head tilted. "Sir?"

"His mind is his shield, and he wields it so well that sometimes I forget—there's more to him than that. He's human, like the rest of us. He's fallible. And in many ways he doesn't have the emotional maturity to deal with an experience like the one Hankel put him through."

"He's a grown man," she said with a frown.

"Yes, but he graduated high school at twelve. He spent the next ten years earning degree after degree, and he was assigned to this unit at twenty-three. That's—far too young. Despite his intelligence. The rest of these agents were in the field for years before they came here. It helped them build the emotional fortitude they need to do this job."

"He just needs to know you're in his corner," she said. "You and Gideon, especially. You're his mentors."

"Is that why you did it? Because you didn't think we'd have your back?"

"I don't know," she said. "Gideon had been riding me since Taj hit the ground. You said all the right things, but…he's Jason Gideon, for fuck's sake. His opinions have weight."

"I don't know how to convince you to trust me," he said.

A quiet, bemused huff. "I know the feeling."

He rose to his feet. Came around the desk and propped against it, arms crossed over his chest. "I want you to take some time off."

She blinked up at him. "Are you firing me?"

"Did I say I was firing you?" He reached for her phone and handed it to her. "Two weeks minimum. You need to recover from your injuries, and you need time to work through all you've learned in the past few days."

"What happens at the end of two weeks?"

"You can take more time, if you need it."

"And if I don't?"

He studied her face. His eyes lingered on the bruises. The cut on her cheek. The split lip. "Then you decide, EJ. Are you in, or are you out? Whatever your decision, you'll have my full support."

"Oh…"

"I'm leaving it in your hands. But if you decide to stay with this team, then I want you in. All the way. No more going rogue. No more disobeying orders. Understood?"

"I…yes, sir. I understand."

"Good. Leave your case files here; I don't want you thinking about work while you're away. This is time for you." He straightened and held out a hand. She took it, slowly, and he helped her to her feet. He didn't let go. "You've been through a lot in a short time, Elliot. I'm not going to make the same mistakes with you I did with Reid. Take the time. And if you need it, take more. When you're ready, we're here if you want to come back."

He didn't block his mind from her, and she saw the truth of it in his head. He wanted her on the team, but if she couldn't get her act together, he didn't have time to babysit her.

He gave her hand a brief squeeze before he dropped it. "Call me if you need anything. As long as it has nothing to do with work."

"Yes, sir," she said. She lingered a moment, unsure. "I keep saying this to you, but—thank you. Again."

"Don't let me down, EJ. I believe in you."

She didn't trust herself to speak. Instead she nodded, grabbed her briefcase, and walked out. She kept her head high, her shoulders straight, and as much as she wanted to cry, she resisted the urge.

It could wait. She had the time.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reid and Jackson have a long conversation, and we finally get to some of the stuff in the tags I know y'all've been waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter, woot woot. I started writing this fic 10 years ago and it just languished. I'm glad to finally finish it.
> 
> I've already started on a new fic in this series that takes place 6 months from this point, like between 3x7 "Identity" and 3x8 "Lucky," so directly before Garcia gets shot.
> 
> Also, I have absolutely no desire to re-write like 14 seasons and 300 episodes (Jack didn't join till season 2) of television, so instead I've been writing like um...vignettes, sort of? Short fics? Idk exactly what to call them that just cover certain moments I want to revisit. Like I haven't written one for Gideon's exit, but I plan to.
> 
> ANYway, point being, my plan is to publish those as like one long fic, where each chapter is basically standalone, almost like how I did "Missing Pieces" to go with Come With Me Tonight and Under My Skin (different fandom, y'all, but if you're into Sons of Anarchy...).

She sat in the silent dark as images and memories from the past few days danced through her mind. She couldn't forget the look on Daniel's face as he held that gun on her. She couldn't get his words out of her head— _I might as well take one last special out with me….that was just tying up loose ends….it's not personal…_.

Not personal. What the hell did that mean? She was just another _loose end_ for him to tie off? Not even a human being. Not really. Just some sort of…creature. A thing he could order around here or there. _You were puppets, and we held all your strings_.

A framed photo of the four of them—Andrea, Daniel, Taj, and Jackson—rested in her lap, but there wasn't enough light to see it. There didn't have to be; she knew it by heart. She and Andrea were between the two men; Dan had his arm around Andrea, and Taj had his around Jackson. They were all toasting with absurd, candy-colored drinks complete with little umbrellas in them. The occasion had been Dan and Andrea's tenth anniversary. Two weeks after this picture was taken, Andrea would be dead, and Jackson and Taj would embark on a journey that would culminate in murder and betrayal.

A tear dripped off her chin and onto the picture's glass. She hated to cry, but just this once she didn't wipe the tears away. They flowed in a soft, gentle trickle over her cheeks, and she let them come. Her shoulders shook in a silent sob, and she raised trembling hands to her wet face.

She was on the verge of a full-blown crying jag when the silence was shattered by the deep, sonorous tones of her doorbell. She froze; sniffled. Who would be stopping by at this hour? All her friends were…dead, pretty much. Except…

She rose and checked the peephole; nearly smiled at the sight. She flicked on a light and opened the door, furtively wiping her face as she did so. "Spencer," she said.

"Elliot." He studied her with worried eyes, a scrunched face. For a moment his jaw tightened and his throat worked, but he said nothing. He cleared his throat and tried again. "You left without saying goodbye."

"I…" She fidgeted. Brushed her hair back from her face. Cast a look over her shoulder into the apartment's darkened interior. "I didn't know what to say."

He gave a slow nod. "Hotch told us you were taking a few weeks off."

She grimaced. "It wasn't entirely optional."

"I figured. Mine wasn't either."

Her head tilted. "You…?"

"A week. But still. I'm not allowed back in the building until next Monday."

"Oh," she said. She started to slide her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, but the bandage on the right caught and she winced at the pain. "How's Morgan?"

"Pissed off, mostly. They won't let him out of the hospital until tomorrow at the earliest. Garcia spends most of her free time there, trying to keep him busy, but…" His shoulders lifted and fell in a brief shrug. "The doctor said he's lucky; some minor burns, a concussion, some bruised ribs. It could've been a lot worse."

"That's good," she said. "And JJ?"

"Fine. I mean, mostly. She's gonna have a bruise—kinda like yours—and she's shaken up, but she's okay." His lips twisted. Then, "You should go visit Morgan. Just to say hi. He likes daffodils, but don't tell him I told you."

The flicker of a smile. "I wouldn't." She dropped her chin and scuffed a bare foot against the dark wood floor. "So I guess the ranks are going to be pretty thin for a few weeks. Everyone got blown up, beaten up, or kidnapped."

"Or a combo thereof," he said.

"Yeah."

"Dangerous job we have."

 _"You_ have, anyway."

"Jack…" He frowned and glanced up and down the hall. "Maybe, um…could I come in? I brought—food."

She blinked. "Jesus, I'm sorry. Yeah, of course. If my grandmother could see me now." She stepped back to let him in, and he paused a moment in the entryway.

Her place was…not what he would have pictured. The tiny kitchen was to his immediate right. Even his inexperienced eye took note of the high-end finishes: custom cabinetry, marble countertops, understated tile backsplash.

The walls throughout were painted soft ballet pink, except the entry, which was covered in colorful wallpaper that reminded him of Keith Haring, or maybe LEGOs. Straight ahead, past the kitchen, a turquoise sectional, sleek and midcentury. A faded Persian rug in shades of pale blue. Its darker, redder companion adorned the kitchen floor.

Gold accents and bold, colorful art prints and photographs of places he'd never been. A bookshelf packed, almost overflowing, but the books all arranged by color.

"Wow," he finally said.

She flipped a switch on the wall and a pendant light he could see through the kitchen passthrough came to life. She hurried ahead of him, her hands fluttering here and there. "You can put the food on the table. It's just around the corner here. Can't see it from the door. I'll grab plates. Is that tea? I'll get glasses too. Make yourself at home."

The other side of the kitchen, an area that had been blocked from his view at the door, had a cosy banquet cushioned in shades of wine and dusky rose. Two midcentury chairs and a small table that reminded him of The Jetsons. He set the bag of food and the jug of tea on it and shoved both hands in his pockets. Strolled to the bookshelf and peered at the titles, his face creased in consternation.

"How do you find anything?" he said. "I'd be searching all day."

She came around the corner and dropped the plates and utensils off at the table before joining him in front of the bookcase. "I can't believe you're asking me that. I've seen your books. They're just piled up all over!"

"It's a system," he said, only mildly insulted. "I know where everything is."

"Mine's a system too." She reached out and ran a fingertip along the line of books. "I remember how a book felt in my hand. The heft of it. The texture. And I remember the color, and how first seeing the cover made me feel. _Don't judge a book by its cover_ has been bullshit for a long time now. Anyway, it's more stimulating this way." She made a face. "Though sometimes it's hard to break up series. Can't they just all match?!"

"There is a solution for that problem," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "Hush. You can hang in your coat in the closet by the door. What's for dinner?"

He went to do as she said. The closet doors were covered in the same wallpaper as the walls, and he hadn't noticed them at first glance. "Thai," he said over his shoulder. "Just the way you like it: extra spicy and no meat."

"And jasmine sweet tea?"

"What am I, an amateur? Of course. I only ordered two glasses, but I guess they recognized you from your order and sent a full jug."

"My order and your face," she said. She passed him a plate and slid into the banquet. He stood awkwardly, unsure if he should slide in next to her or take one of the chairs.

"What do you mean, my face?"

She tilted her head toward the open bench beside her. "More comfy than the chairs."

"Right," he said. He relocated some of the squishy, velvet-covered pillows and settled on the banquet.

"The owners know me," she said as she spooned noodles onto her plate. "By extension, they now know you. We've been there together—how many times?"

"Ten," he answered without hesitation.

Her mouth curved. She licked a bit of sauce from her thumb. "Right. Ten times. They're observant people who know their customers. Last time I was in there, Somchai asked me where my boyfriend was."

He choked on a gulp of tea and nearly spat it back out. Instead he coughed and cleared his throat. "Went down the wrong way," he gasped at her look.

"Don't worry: I told him we're just coworkers." She hesitated. "Friends."

Dipping his spring roll in duck sauce took all his concentration for several seconds; or at least it seemed to; until finally he cut his eyes her way. "I haven't been much of a friend to you since—Georgia." He scowled at his own unwillingness to say the name. "Hankel."

"Well." Now it was her turn to be absorbed in the food. "We—we talked about that. You had your reasons."

"Hmm. Like I guess you had yours for not saying goodbye. Or going to see Morgan. Or checking on JJ. Or telling me yourself what happened at the school." His tone was mild, but the words were perfectly aimed. She gave a little grunt as they hit home.

"I was going to," she said. "Except the goodbye part. But the rest."

"Okay," he said. He chewed his spring roll and waited her out.

She set down her fork. Let out a rough sigh. Slumped back against the cushions and crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm sure you read the reports," she finally said.

"Of course. But I know some stuff was left out. Necessarily."

She fiddled with her spoon, but when his eyes dropped to her hand she stopped. "I put my gun down because I didn't see any other way. And I thought—I thought I could…" She trailed off and pointed to her head. "But it didn't work on him. Any of it. Couldn't see his thoughts, couldn't influence him. It was like a brick wall."

"That's—strange."

"Strange that I never realized it before. I guess he used to feed me just enough that I thought I was seeing…what I still sometimes see even when I'm blocking and not looking."

He gave a slow nod. She'd explained all that to him before: that sometimes small fragments or snatches of information filtered through, especially from very intelligent minds. It was why she'd taught him techniques to block her out. It was why he'd used them, and others, so hard for the last three months.

"He had been trained. They all had, our partners—who weren't really partners at all, it turns out. They used—us. People like me. In those places. Like that basement." She broke off and swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. She glanced at him, and the compassion she saw in his deep-set hazel eyes and finely-made face was almost her undoing.

When she spoke again the words poured out like a torrent. She told him everything Talbot had said, classified be damned. She explained about the experiments, and how he claimed to have saved her from them. How he was responsible for sending her to Parachinar. He'd been the one to arrange her leave of absence, and possibly her return too.

"God, Jack," he murmured when the words finally dried up. "I'm so sorry. That must've been…to learn someone you trusted was…" He frowned. "I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "That wasn't even the worst part. I mean, it was really, really bad, don't get me wrong. But—Reid, I was—look, since I've joined the BAU I haven't used my ability on an UNSUB. Not in a talk-down situation like that. I've been trying to prove to myself since Lloyd Henry that I don't need it. But…" She sighed and scraped both hands back through her hair. "I always knew it was there if I did."

"But this time it wasn't," he said.

"I know that probably sounds ridiculous. _Oh poor Jack, she couldn't read the UNSUB's mind, boohoo_. But it's like—it's like if you were suddenly struck blind or deaf, and a sociopath had a gun on you with every fucking intention of killing you where you stood. I felt so goddamn…"

"Helpless," he said when she left the thought unfinished.

"Yes," she said. She looked up to meet his eyes. "Helpless."

"Like being tied to a chair and beaten, fed drugs you don't want, while the people you care about most in the world watch."

Her mouth fell open. The crease appeared between her brows. She reached for him with her good hand. "Spencer—"

He grabbed her wrist before she could touch him. "Don't. I'm not—I just meant…I get it. You don't have to explain that feeling to me."

"Okay," she said. Her eyes darted to where his long fingers gripped her wrist, but he didn't let go. "Then Hotch and Gideon showed up and I thought it was over, but they didn't shoot him and he just kept talking. Then I heard Prentiss."

"Heard her?"

"In my head. She told me to distract him, so I threw everything I had at him. More of my ability than I've ever tried to use on anyone before. But it didn't even phase him."

"But it did distract him."

"Yes. Long enough for her to shoot him." She drew in a shuddering breath. "I left him there, Spencer. I left him to bleed out on that cold concrete floor. And that's what he did."

"You—you aren't a doctor, Jack. You couldn't have saved him. Gideon tried, but the medics were too far away."

"No, you don't understand." She yanked her arm from his grasp and scrambled out of the banquet. She stared, unseeing, out the glass door to the terrace. She was in profile, but even from there he could see the emotion burning in her eyes. He couldn't quite name it—but then, that wasn't really his forte on a normal day.

"I don't regret it," she said. "I hope he died afraid. I know he died surrounded by strangers." She turned her head in a jerky motion. "Is that bad?"

Silence while he considered. He carefully rose from the bench. Tucked his hands in his pockets and stood next to her, shoulder to shoulder. He watched the light play with a colored glass doodad she had hanging in the window. A breeze rustled the plants out on her balcony.

He said nothing.

She waited.

Finally he turned to look at her. "Did you decorate this place yourself?"

She blinked. Frowned. "I—yeah. The kitchen was…a huge redo. A friend of mine helped with that. Her senior project for her interior design degree. Same with the bathroom. The school supplemented the budget. That's how I could afford to go so fancy."

He nodded and gave another look around. "It's not what I expected, but—it suits you."

"Spencer, I'm sorry, what does that have to do with anything?"

A quiet sigh before his eyes met hers again. "You're still the woman who designed this apartment, Jack. It's…pretty. And whimsical. I look around here and I see someone creative and kind and hopeful. Generous and adventurous. All of that is still you."

His mouth moved in a brief grimace. "You didn't owe him anything. You sure as hell didn't owe him…" He paused. Frowned. "He had no right to hold your hand while he died. He took too much from you. He had no right to ask for more."

She looked away. Wiped a tear from her cheek and cleared her throat. "Thank you," she said. She ducked her head. "I should've said goodbye. Before I left."

"Only if you aren't coming back." His face scrunched. "You are coming back, aren't you?"

"I…plan to, yeah." She paused. "The Agency might have different ideas."

Inside his pockets his hands clenched into fists. "Fuck the Agency."

She let out a surprised laugh. "Well, yes. But that might not be an option for me."

"I heard everything," he said, abruptly.

"I'm sorry?"

"Hotch had his radio open. I heard every word he said. I can recite it from memory."

"Reid, what are you saying?"

He spun toward her and grabbed her shoulders. Tugged her around to face him. "If they try to take you back, we have leverage. I heard it. Hotch did. Gideon. Prentiss probably, too. At least some of it. And you, of course." He gave her a little shake. "We have leverage," he said again. "They can't just take you."

She shrugged off his hold, distracted by the fierce intensity of his thoughts. "I don't understand. You would go against the CIA just…for me?"

"We're a team, Elliot. It's what we do."

Her mouth quirked. "The team that gets kidnapped together, stays together," she said.

"Ha. Yeah, something like that. Look, I'm just saying—you have options. You have people in your corner. You have...me. Despite appearances to the contrary."

She acknowledged that with a brief tilt of her head. Then, "You know, now that I think about it, it probably won't come to that. They have how many murders to cover up? I'm sure they wouldn't want it getting out that one of their agents killed four women, and then five more people to cover up his crimes."

"We don't have much evidence," he said.

"We have Monroe's safe. It was fireproof, luckily. And your memory."

"Whatever it takes, Jack. Your life is yours. They don't get to decide for you."

She chewed the inside of her lower lip, heedless of the still-healing split. "I guess maybe for once it is, and they don't." She laughed, and there was so much relief in the sound it hurt him to hear it. "God. Look at us. Our food is getting cold and we're plotting to take down the CIA."

"A portion of it, at least," he said with a grin. "Come on. You can explain to me the merits of adding sweet and sour sauce to your panang curry."

She scowled at his back. "I've told you! The sweet cuts the spicy. I like the contrast."

"Right, right. One day you'll let me get the duck."

"I will not," she said on a huff.

They settled back down at the table, and the two fell into the sort of silence that only occurs when in the presence of truly delicious food. As the worst of his hunger was assuaged, he put down his fork. His face screwed up in the way that let her know he had something on his mind.

"Out with it," she said, mildly.

"Well…" He shifted in his seat. "I told you I heard everything."

"Mhmm." She helped herself to some more Pad See Ew. "So you said."

"At one point he said…he said his wife wasn't a d—er, lesbian—and then he said, or bi-curious, whatever the hell you call yourself." His eyes flicked up to meet hers. "I guess it's a pretty personal question, but…what did he mean?"

"Oh. That." She gave a little wave. "I'm bi. I don't really use the term bi-curious, so I'm not sure where he got that. Just…bi. The curiosity is more, like. A general state of being."

"Oh," he said. Now it was his turn to fiddle with the flatware. "Well. Um. Me…too."

"Oh!" she said, then rolled her eyes. "Wow, we're an articulate pair, aren't we?"

He let out a brief, awkward laugh. "Yeah…"

She took a moment to refill her tea. She had a million questions, but she didn't want to be nosy. Or overwhelm him. "Are you out to anyone else?"

"Uh. You remember my friend Ethan? From New Orleans?"

"Mmm. The hot piano player. Yeah, not a guy I'm gonna forget any time soon." She froze with her glass halfway to her mouth and her eyes went wide. "Wait, you mean—?"

Color crept up his neck and around his ears. "Yeah, back in college. He's—the only guy. And there's only been one girl." His forehead creased. "So I don't know. Maybe I'm not bi. Maybe I'm just…weird."

"Why? Because your bedpost isn't covered in notches? We aren't all unmitigated sluts, you know."

"That's not what I meant!"

She grinned. "I know, boy genius; relax." She put her glass on the table and twisted around to face him, dragging a leg up onto the bench so she could sit sideways. "Look, Spence, it's…tricky. For people like us."

"Freaks like us?" he said with a self-deprecating smile.

"Yeah, exactly. It can be hard to get close to people. Hard to let them in." She drummed her fingers against her knee. "When I took my leave from the Agency, I went a little wild. I mean, I was in a Ph.D. program at Georgetown, so I couldn't go _too_ wild…but, still. Before that there had only been two, but by the time I earned that second doctorate…" She trailed off with a shrug. "See: proverbial bedpost and said notches."

"It's just…" His expressive face worked as he struggled with it. "How do you even get to that point? The point where you want…to be that close to someone? To let them that close?"

"I don't know. Not anymore. Back then a lot of alcohol was involved, but these days…it's different. I'm different, I guess."

"Physical attraction is kinda the easy part," he said.

"Yeah, it is."

"It's all the rest of it that's complicated."

She sighed. "Yeah, it is. But, you know, there are no rules. If you aren't into sex, don't have it. No one's judging you." She flashed a brief grin. "They might tease, sometimes, but it's from a place of love."

His shoulders hunched. "I know." He flicked his eyes toward her, then away. "It's not that I'm not into sex," he said. "I'm just…I guess…only into sex with the right person. Or people. Not—at the same time! I don't think."

"Spencer." She nudged him. "Relax. You might have a freaky brain, but about this you're perfectly normal. Just not exactly average. Which, I mean. Would we expect anything else?"

"Hmmph. I guess not."

"It's like the French say: _l'amour fait les plus grandes douceurs et les plus sensibles infortunes de la vie_." She lifted a hand in a shrug. "It's a mixed bag."

"I don't actually speak French," he said.

"What?!" She pressed a palm to her chest. "Something I can do that the great Spencer Reid can't?!"

He scowled at her, but there was no heat in it. "You can read minds, Jack."

"That doesn't count!"

"Yes it does!"

"Well it shouldn't," she said.

"Hmm."

A brief silence fell. She nudged him again, a little harder. "Two bisexual Scorpios in the same intense, intimate work environment. Good thing we aren't attracted to each other—like that."

He looked up at her. Their eyes met. Held. The wind outside suddenly seemed very loud. As did the neighbor's music from next door. She had meant it as a joke, but clearly it didn't land that way. For either of them.

"I don't believe in astrology," he said at last.

"That's good," she replied, lightly. "Then I guess we don't have anything to worry about, do we?"

Still they watched each other. The tension was back, but different this time. They let the moment stretch. She was sure he could hear the pounding of her heart.

He wiped suddenly sweating palms against his trousers.

At last his eyes darted to the table, then back to her. "I got mango sticky rice," he said.

"Oh." Her face eased into a smile and her pulse dropped back to normal. "That's my favorite."

"I know. Why do you think I got it?"

"And that, boy genius, is why we're friends."

The moment passed, and they didn't speak of it again, but even as they demolished the mango sticky rice and, later, watched one of the terrible old horror movies she had on VHS, neither of them forgot it. They watched each other, and they wondered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to hear from you guys! Are my jokes landing? How's my characterization? Dialogue? How do you feel about Jack? It's so quiet out there...
> 
> Oh, also, if you'd like to see pics of Jack's apartment, you can check out the "ej" tag on my fic tumblr, juiceinpanties.


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